Today’s mass-produced tomatoes often grow to palm-sized proportions, but their naturally occurring ancestors were far smaller fruits. They were also sweeter and more flavorful due to their lower water content compared to the red fruits found in grocery stores—but recent genetic discoveries have unlocked the path to attaining the best of both worlds.

They realized that if they “release” these breaks, tomatoes could become much sweeter. They used CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology to “knock out” these genes in several tomato varieties. The results were impressive. Sugar levels, particularly ...

Selection for bigger tomatoes has made the fruits less sweet, but now it has been shown that gene editing can make them sweeter without decreasing yields

Using CRISPR, the popular gene-editing tool, scientists bumped up the fruit’s sugar content by 30 percent without sacrificing size or yields.