Raf, the king of tomatoes, is celebrating half a century of existence in Almeria: CASI, Agrupalmería, Biosabor, the Granada-based La Palma cooperative and the Clause seed house, owner of the patent, have signed an alliance to produce and market a new variety of Black Raf, resulting of a cross between the traditional Raf and the Crimean Black. This campaign, the variety has been in the test stage and after the summer it will hit the market under the name Adora.
Raf tomatoes have never lost their reputation in the five decades since they started to be grown in Cabo de Gata and Vega de Almeria. The only sign of weakness was that it almost died of success because of the numerous imitations that have been launched and the confusion that has been generated in squares and markets about its authenticity.
Raf, like the Tanagel, the Silestone or the Sherigan, is a genuine Almerian invention, despite its French origin, because without the red soil, the saline water of Cabo de Gata and the traditional handling on the part of producers it would be impossible to cultivate this gourmet tomato.
One of the companies that is already celebrating the golden jubilee of this ribbed vegetable is Agrupalmería, which has grown a good part of the best Raf tomatoes of the province in its premises of La Cañada. The company of the Femago Group has started a differentiation campaign, with a quality seal in each piece to identify the authentic Raf accompanied by special cardboard packaging.
Sources from Agrupalmería assure that, thanks to this campaign, the Raf is still reaching prices of between eight and nine Euro per kilo, which are practically Christmas prices.
Almost the entire production ends up in the domestic market, especially in markets of Madrid, Alicante, Barcelona, Valladolid and Albacete.
Since 1999, Clause, the house that owns the seed, has also been marketing the Delizia and Conquista brands, which brought improvements in terms of resistance to traditional Raf viruses.
One of the advantages of the Raf for its growers is that each envelope containing one thousand seeds is marketed for around 200 Euro.
In Almeria, there are still 80 hectares of traditional Raf (the Sistine chapel of the variety) in the area of Los Mártinez, Ruescas, Pujaire and El Charco, and around 500 hectares of Raf Delizia.
The history of Raf tomatoes starts in Marmande, a town in the south of France, where a group of producers came up with the idea of growing a new type of ribbed tomato in order to recover from a terrible pest of phylloxera that had destroyed the vineyards of the area.
The seed had been selected by the company Clause after a cross made in 1961 between the tomato Marmande Clause 27 and a variety of American tomato resistant to the Fusarium fungus, and was registered in 1967, when it also arrived in Almeria.
In its beginnings, it was a tomato variety with a vigorous plant that made long cycle cultivation possible and which has always stood out for its good calibre and ribbed shape, its prominent green neck and its almost miraculous balance between sweetness and sourness.
Raf tomatoes began their expansion in Alicante, Murcia and mainly Almeria, where it became fully adapted, and it has been the only tomato variety that has survived for 50 years.
The launch of the first hybrid tomatoes, in greater demand by the market because of their shelf life, reduced the Raf production in the 70's and 80's to a minimum, with the crops concentrating in areas with very saline waters, such as La Vega de Almeria, La Cañada, El Alquián and Pujaire, where the salinity gives the fruits an exceptional taste.
This fact marked the differences between the Raf and the rest of varieties even more, allowing it to consolidate as a locally-grown gourmet product with an extraordinary flavour. Raf tomatoes are under the Protected Geographical Indication Tomate de La Cañada-Níjar.
Source: lavozdealmeria.es