Climate change threatens Bulgarian pink tomato

The pink tomato grown in Bulgaria is losing the battle against the tomato leaf miner. The Tuta absoluta caterpillar, which can destroy 100% of the pink tomato crop, first appeared in Bulgaria a few years ago. Desislava Dimitrova, a professor at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS), is the coordinator of Slow Food for Bulgaria, a non-profit association for the preservation of traditional, food and cultural diversity. She explained that Kurtovo Konare is a historical place for Bulgarian horticulture, as the first pink tomatoes were grown here. The life of the local population has been permanently linked to the cultivation of vegetables for decades. The Kurtovo Konare pink tomato has a very thin skin, which makes it difficult to transport, but the advantage is that it has a very long shelf life; it can last more than ten days without ...