He knows practically everything there is to know about tomatoes. What he doesn’t know, precisely, is what makes one taste good and another taste like cardboard. But he’s trying to find out.

A scientist at the University of Florida’s Gulf Coast Research and Education Center in Bradenton, Scott is working with colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the University of Georgia to probe the almost mystical properties of tomato flavor. It’s a project long in coming for an industry that has always worried most about a tomato’s other attributes, such as size and color and yield and firmness and resistance to disease.

“Flavor is a tricky thing to breed for,” Scott said. “I can’t think of another commodity, other than maybe muskmelon, that has a more complicated taste. It’s not that tomato breeders are up to some evil conspiracy. But to do flavor and get all the other characteristics, it’s just very difficult.”

There’s a lot about a tomato’s flavor that researchers don’t yet know, Scott said. Three things generally go into it: sugars, acids, and aromatic volatiles.

“They’re all important, but I like to look at it in a way similar to what makes a cake taste good,” he said. “The volatiles are going to give you the icing. The right mix of volatiles, and how they interact with the sugars and acids, is probably what makes the difference. But we’ve been studying that for years, and we don’t have a handle on it yet.”

A big reason why is that there are literally hundreds of volatiles in the chemistry of tomatoes. Research has shown about 17 of them to be most important in creating that luscious taste people swear can only come in a tomato picked from grandma’s backyard garden.

“Generally,” Scott said, “good-tasting tomatoes tend to be high in volatiles.”

So how do Scott and his colleagues conduct this research? Part of it is simpler than you might imagine. Scott begins by -- well, by going out into his fields at the research center and tasting the tomatoes. Sometimes, he takes samples home with him so his wife can offer her opinions. She’ll even take tomatoes to work with her to share at the office.

Blind consumer panels -- often involving folks from the huge population of local retirees -- are then convened. People rate the tomatoes using a standardized sheet of flavor characteristics. The results then may be compared to panels of experienced tomato tasters.

Once breeding lines are selected -- for either good or bad flavor notes, for comparison purposes -- Scott works to stabilize the lines through multiple seasons so that each line is completely inbred and “breeding true,” he said. Samples are sent to a USDA colleague for a genetic analysis of biochemistry pathways.

In Scott’s opinion, a tomato with a ‘fruity-floral note” constitutes a winner.

So far, the research has yielded this surprising finding: bad flavor is better than no flavor.

“A tomato with some flavor, even if it’s bad, is usually rated higher than a tomato that’s bland,” Scott said.

One tomato that’s received plenty of raves for its exceptionally sweet taste is the so-called grape tomato. But those hoping for a giant-size version of the fruit shouldn’t hold their breath. There’s a good reason why it doesn’t exist.