wrote in message
...
On Wed, 03 May 2006 18:11:11 GMT, "Doug Kanter"
wrote:

But, I'm positive that if they
came up with a strawberry with a skin tough enough to resist mechanical
damage, you would stop buying strawberries.

That is exactly what is going on with "grocery store tomatoes"
They made a fruit tough enough for machine handling and shipping but
it is not fit to eat. Florida is looking into machine harvested
oranges but that will require replanting all the groves with different
spacing between the trees and perhaps a different hybrid of the fruit.
God only know how horrible they will taste.

The tomato skin thing was undertaken more for the packing equipment than
anything to do with the harvest. Similar issue, though.