Comprehensive vegetable variety trials carried on concomitantly with the phytopathological studies since 1925 have provided many useful recommendations for Florida growers. Over 30 years ago, disease-resistant cucumbers where shown to be adapted to the south Florida area. Pioneer efforts with new crops considered potentially valuable resulted in the discovery that the sweet corn variety, Iona, was productive and it was recommended in 1943. These efforts have continued and more recently variety trials with specialty vegetable crops have established the potential of commercial production of leek, radicchio, annual rhubarb, and snowpea. Continuing trials with tomato, pepper, eggplant, onion, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, cantaloupe, watermelon (diploid and triploid), cucumber, squash, sweet corn, okra, pumpkins, and others have identified the availability of adapted varieties.

Pole bean breeding at GCREC resulted in the introduction of disease-resistant varieties. Manatee Wonder, a pepper variety, was introduced in 1944. In 1975, Morgan, a honeydew type melon which could be vine-ripened was released. More recently, a project to develop bush tropical pumpkins has been progressing and a release will be made in the near future.

In 1942, a full-fledged tomato breeding program was initiated which has resulted in numerous releases. Some of the key contributions include Manalucie in 1953 which combined resistance to more than five diseases. In the 1960’s, GCREC and campus scientists identified a gene conferring resistance to fusarium wilt race 2 that has become one of the most widely used genes by tomato breeders around the world. In 1969, Walter, the first tomato variety with Fusarium wilt race 2 resistance was released, eliminating a disease that was devastating the Florida tomato industry. A joint research effort between the GCREC tomato breeding program and the H. J. Heinz Co. resulted in the development of breeding lines with improved firmness that have been the basis of firmness for breeding programs around the world and allowed for improved shipping quality of Florida tomatoes. In 1971, the first machine harvest fresh market tomato variety Florida MH-1 was released. This variety combined firmness with the jointless pedicel trait that allowed stemless harvesting. The hybrid Floramerica won a bronze medal in the All America Vegetable trials in 1974 and was released in 1977. It has been widely grown by home gardeners throughout North America. The heat-tolerant hybrid Solar Set, released in 1989, improved fall crop yields in Florida and has been widely grown commercially in the 1990’s. It has also performed well for flavor in numerous sensory panels. The dwarf Micro-Tom variety, released in 1989 as the world’s smallest tomato for the nursery industry, is now being used as a model system for mutagenesis in molecular genetics laboratories around the world. In the 1980’s, GCREC scientists discovered a gene for resistance to Fusarium wilt race 3 that is used by tomato breeders worldwide. Two Fusarium wilt race 3 resistant breeding lines were released in 1994 and one, Fla. 7547, is a parent in the resistant hybrid Floralina that is now being grown on farms infested with this disease. The two Fusarium wilt resistant releases and two Fusarium crown and root rot resistant breeding lines released in 1999 all possess the crimson gene that increases lycopene by 50%. Soon commercial varieties may be released with the crimson trait. Lycopene has recently been shown to be a potent antioxidant associated with risk reduction of several cancers so crimson varieties may prove important for the Florida tomato industry in the future. Bacterial spot tolerant varieties also may be released in the near future.