Roma VF

Roma VF fruit are the classic red, egg-shaped paste tomato, with thick, meaty walls and few seeds that keep moisture low. The flesh is exceptionally solid and dense, with a tangy, meaty flavor that comes through in cooking. Each fruit averages about two ounces, and its high solids-to-juice ratio is what lets it cook down quickly into a rich, concentrated sauce rather than a watery one.

Because its flesh is dense and low in seeds and water, Roma VF cooks down fast into rich sauce, making it a top choice for passata, ketchup, and paste, and it also cans, freezes, and dries well for pantry storage. Its firm texture holds up for whole canning as well as for juicing, giving it a wider range of preserved uses than a fresh-eating tomato would offer.

Roma VF was developed as a stabilized cross between the original Roma and California Red Top VR 9, a pairing that combined Roma's fusarium wilt resistance with verticillium resistance from its other parent, giving the cultivar its VF disease tolerance. That resistance helps plants stay healthy in soils where these wilts are common. As a determinate variety, it sets most of its fruit within a short window, which suits batch canning and sauce-making, and in short-season regions this early, concentrated fruit set can still deliver a reliable harvest even in cooler summers.

Roma VF was bred in the 1950s specifically to add resistance to verticillium and fusarium wilt to the original Roma tomato. It was introduced in 1963 as a variety adapted for growing conditions in the United States and Canada.