Tomatoes
Hyloom Tomatoes

Hyloom Tomatoes: The Best of Both Worlds

Above: specially bred hyloom tomato varieties 'Harvest Moon', 'Woodstock', and 'Strawberry Fields'.

By the Hensley’s tomato team

Growers have long wanted a tomato that looks and tastes like a beloved heirloom but has the vigor, disease resistance and productivity that make it worth growing. Plenty of varieties were tried over the years without a clear winner. Around 2015, the first so-called "hyloom" tomatoes reached North American seed catalogs, combining genuine heirloom eating quality with the yield and toughness of a hybrid. The range has grown steadily since, and today there's a good selection of hyloom tomatoes, each one carefully chosen.

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Heirloom vs. Hybrid Tomatoes

Cherokee Purple (L) & Marnero (R)
'Cherokee Purple' (L) & 'Marnero' (R)

Heirloom tomatoes are open-pollinated varieties kept going by gardeners, farmers and families who saved and shared their seed over generations, and many carry long histories and deep cultural meaning for the people who kept them. They're loved for their looks, aroma and flavor, but they can be hard to grow well, particularly for commercial growers who need dependable yields and quality. Heirlooms are often more prone to certain diseases, usually yield less than modern hybrids, and frequently crack, split or catface.

Striped German (L) & Margold (R)
'Striped German' (L) & 'Margold' (R)

Hybrid (F1) tomatoes come from crossing two genetically different parent lines. Breeders usually select hybrids for disease resistance, vigor, fruit quality, yield and adaptability. "F1" stands for first filial generation, the first generation from that cross. "Hybrid vigor" describes the boost in traits like yield and plant health that hybrids often show. Unlike heirlooms, seed saved from an F1 hybrid won't produce plants matching the hybrid.

The term Hyloom describes a hybrid that combines the strong field performance of a modern hybrid with many of the qualities people love in heirlooms: rich flavor and texture and striking looks, plus better productivity, uniformity and disease resistance.

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Disease Resistance

'Hot Streak' is a striped hybrid with bright color, good size and a commercial-grade disease package, including resistance to leaf mold, gray leaf spot ( Stemphylium), Fusarium race 2, Fusarium crown and root rot, tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV), Verticillium, and tomato mosaic virus (ToMV).

Disease resistance is one of the biggest advantages hylooms have over heirlooms. Disease is among the toughest problems with heirlooms and can make their yields swing widely from year to year. Whether you grow for market or for your table, few things are more frustrating than putting work into a variety and getting a small, unpredictable harvest.

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Greenhouse Performers

Because of their history, heirlooms were all selected in fields and gardens, not modern greenhouses or high tunnels, so they weren't chosen to meet the particular demands of protected growing. Many hylooms, by contrast, were bred for greenhouse production. They have uniform habits that suit pruning and trellising, predictable fruiting that makes the most of greenhouse methods, resistance to diseases common under cover, and better tolerance of greenhouse conditions and stresses. That makes many hylooms a much better fit than true heirlooms for greenhouses, high tunnels and hoophouses.

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French Heritage Collection: Where it all Started

Ribbed red 'Marbonne' hyloom tomatoes

Our first French-bred hyloom tomatoes appeared in the Hensley’s 2015 and 2016 catalogs.

'Marnero', 'Marbonne', and 'Margold': bred in France, these were among the first hylooms to reach North American growers, around 2015. They brought the classic heirloom look, in unusual colors and shapes, together with a well-balanced sweet-tart flavor, a complex aroma and the soft, tender flesh heirlooms are prized for. They are still popular, and the French heritage-style varieties have since been joined by many more hylooms over the past decade.

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Hylooms from classical breeding

In the ten years since the French Heritage Collection arrived, many more strong-performing hyloom varieties have joined the lineup.

Hylooms are the product of classical plant breeding, a discipline that is part art and part science. It has been practiced formally for more than a century, and some of its techniques are much older. Breeders begin with a large, varied population of plants, pick out the individuals with the traits they want, collect seed from them and grow it out the next year to see what comes through. Everything depends on selection: the higher the standard, the better the result. Through repeated careful selection, breeders develop "parent lines", which are then crossed to make a new hybrid. Crossing is slow, exacting work, because individual flowers are pollinated by hand. Seed from that cross grows into the hybrid variety gardeners come to know by name. On average it takes at least 8 years to go from an idea to a new variety on the market.

Flavor comes first in hyloom breeding. Breeders also select for reliability, early maturity, appeal at direct markets, yield, labor savings and disease resistance, with particular attention to late blight, early blight and leaf mold. Hyloom varieties are selected for performance in northern growing conditions and in trials with commercial growers around the country before release.

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