Riccio di Parma is a stunning, highly ribbed heirloom tomato from the Parma region of Northern Italy. This is a large tomato (weighing 200g to 500g) that has an excellent meaty texture and sweet taste. The plants are about 5 ft (150 cm) tall.
It was one of our favourites in the garden.
This is a fantastic tomato for eating fresh in salads, sandwiches or burgers, and cooking in sauces.
A quick salad idea: cut Riccio di Parma into slices, drizzle with a good olive oil, sprinkle with a pinch of salt and top with a few basil leaves.
A bit more — Riccio di Parma is high in ‘bioactives’:
To really appreciate this tomato — we need to know about its history. Which is also the story of how our food has changed over time.
The first selections of this tomato were made by Professor Carlo Rognoni at his farm in Panocchia, Italy in the 1860s. His goal was to create an excellent processing tomato (for sauces, paste, etc). Indeed, Riccio di Parma was once a staple of the canning industry in Italy, until it fell out of favour in the 1950s as “yield optimization and mechanization compatibility” became the preferred traits for processing tomatoes. This change, this transformation in values if you will, is described in a 2025 paper published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis (see image):
Over the past century, the breeding programs for processing tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) have focused predominantly on yield optimization and mechanization compatibility, often overlooking critical aspects of fruit quality and flavor that are increasingly valued by consumers.
In this paper, the authors evaluate how the nutritional quality of processing tomatoes has changed since 1900 — and include Riccio di Parma in their comparisons.
What they found was that over time, the nutritional quality of processing tomatoes has decreased — as measured by declines in some important ‘bioactives’.
- ‘Bioactives’ in plants are beneficial plant compounds, also called ‘functional molecules’, that are health promoting compounds, such as, vitamins and antioxidants, which maintain human cell health and protect cells from damage caused by free radicals.
Let’s look at Vitamin C. The authors report that Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) showed a significant decreasing trend over time resulting in a loss of 0.47%/year in the tomatoes they compared. In other words, ‘newer’ processing tomatoes had less Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) than ‘older’ varieties — ‘older’ and ‘newer’ designations were based on the tomato’s year of release.
Riccio di Parma (the ‘oldest’ tomato in the study) had the highest levels of Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C). The authors write: “It can be assumed that the genetic loss in AsA [Ascorbic Acid/Vitamin C] over the study period was around 50% (starting from around 30 mg 100 g FW¬ 1 in ‘Riccio di Parma’), reaching the actual level of 15–20 mg 100 g FW¬1) in line with the current nutritional communications for fresh processing tomato.”
Riccio di Parma also had some of the highest levels of antioxidants, in particular Glutathione and Cysteine — and these important antioxidants also showed significant decreases over time (‘newer’ tomatoes had less of these antioxidants, ‘older’ tomatoes had more). The authors explain the loss as “genetic erosion”: “These data reflect the general phenomenon of “genetic erosion”, meaning that a loss in nutritional value resulted, evident under domestication and breeding programs.”
Let that sink in — over time the nutritional quality of the tomatoes declined as breeders selected for traits preferred by the tomato processing industry. We are not getting the same nutrition from our tomatoes that our grandparents did. (See our description of Costoluto Fiorentino (on this website) to read about another study that tracked nutritional changes in Tuscan heirlooms vs modern cultivars.)
Although, it is also important to point out that “a slightly less mineral-rich tomato isn’t going to tip you into deficiency overnight”, to quote Dr Anne Jomard in an article on the ‘Food Facts’ website. She writes:
“What it may do, over time, is make it harder for a “balanced diet” to deliver the same nutritional punch it did half a century ago. This is especially important as global fruit and vegetable consumption is already well below the WHO’s 400 g/day target, with most adults needing to roughly double their intake.”
A counter to this trend? Grow your own nutrient-rich tomatoes — and beat the system, or maybe stay two steps ahead of it.
To expand on a line from a Joni Mitchell song — we need to get ourselves back to the garden and grow heirloom tomatoes.
_________
How to Grow Tomatoes? Start seeds indoors 6 weeks before the last frost. Plant seed 5mm (¼ inch) deep. Transplant after the danger of frost has passed/later spring.
