AgricultureID

Cultivar · Tomato cultivar

Rutgers

Rutgers is a historic American tomato released in 1934 by the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, bred for both canning and fresh market and long a standard in the eastern United States.

Dated referenceLast reviewed: 2026-07-12Updated: 2026-07-12
Illustrative diagram · AgricultureID (original)

Record

Cultivar / variety
Variety of
Tomato
Botanical taxon
Solanum lycopersicum
Type
Historic cultivar
Breeding method
Cross-bred selection
Origin
New Jersey, United States
Released
1934
Breeder / institution
New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Rutgers University (with the Campbell Soup Company)
Registry status
Historical
Registries
Adaptation
A warm-season main-crop tomato historically bred for eastern United States conditions; adaptation of modern strains varies by region.
Intended use
Processing (canning and juice), Fresh market

Registry listing or variety protection is jurisdiction- and date-specific and does not by itself indicate current commercial availability, universal cultivation approval, patent status, or a recommendation.

Rutgers is a historic American tomato released in 1934 by the New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station at Rutgers University, developed in cooperation with the Campbell Soup Company. It was bred as a dual-purpose main-crop tomato serving both the canning trade and the fresh market.

The original Rutgers came from a cross of earlier varieties and became one of the most widely grown tomatoes in the mid-twentieth-century United States. Its influence persists, though the strains sold today often differ from the 1934 release.

Identity and type

Rutgers is described as a main-crop tomato bearing rounded red fruit well suited to canning and juice as well as fresh use. It was bred from a cross of established varieties of its day and released as a dependable dual-purpose type for eastern growers.

Parent crop
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)
Growth habit
Indeterminate
Released
1934
Intended use
Canning, juice, and fresh market

History and modern strains

Rutgers was a leading commercial and home-garden tomato for decades and remains a recognized heritage name. Over time, various reselections and improved strains have been distributed under the Rutgers name, so modern seed may not match the characteristics of the original 1934 release.

Official variety registration

Entries recorded for this denomination in official variety registers. Registration is a legal fact about marketing or ownership, separate from where the variety is grown or whether seed is available.

No entry for this cultivar is currently listed in the registers AgricultureID reads.

Entries that are no longer current

Each register decides separately, so these are grouped by instrument and jurisdiction and never combined into one timeline.

ItalyNational list entry

  • Observed 2026-08-27Surrendereddate not published by the sourceThe EU Plant Variety Portal — national list entry records this entry as “Surrendered” and publishes no date for the change.
    • These registers publish a grant or listing date but no date for an entry ceasing to be current, so when this ended is not established here.

History records what an official source published at a point in time. Where the source states the date a change took effect, that date is shown; where it does not, only the date AgricultureID observed the change is shown, and it is labelled as such.

A variety registration permits marketing; a plant variety protection right is ownership. They are granted by different bodies under different law and are never added together.

Entries are matched to this cultivar by identical denomination and by matching botanical species. Registers do not publish a global variety identifier, so a same-name entry in the same species could in principle be a distinct variety.

Registration is jurisdiction-specific, is granted under a particular legal instrument, and changes. A variety absent from a register may still be grown; confirm the current position with the responsible authority before acting on it. How registration is recorded.

Relationships

Evidence-backed connections in the knowledge graph.

Related topics

Scope & limitations

Geographic scope: Bred in New Jersey for eastern United States production and grown widely across North America; modern strains differ from the historic release.

Climate context: Warm-season main-crop tomato originally developed for eastern United States field conditions.

  • Many strains distributed as Rutgers are later reselections that differ from the original 1934 variety, so the name alone does not fix the plant’s exact characteristics.
  • Whether the historic type is best described as indeterminate or semi-determinate is reported with some variation across sources.
  • Its historical adaptation to eastern United States conditions does not guarantee comparable behaviour in other regions.

Sources

This article draws on the following authoritative sources. See our sources & methodology for how they are selected.

  1. [1]GRIN-Global / National Plant Germplasm System (opens in a new tab)

    USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS)

    Authoritative

    Cited for: Tomato germplasm, parentage, and cultivar nomenclature (collection level)

    Type:
    Official registry
    Jurisdiction:
    United States / Global
    Accessed:
    2026-07-12
  2. [2]GBIF — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (opens in a new tab)

    Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)

    High

    Cited for: Taxonomic backbone for Solanum lycopersicum

    Type:
    Reference database
    Jurisdiction:
    Global
    Accessed:
    2026-07-12

Related topics

Crops

Irrigation