An heirloom tomato (also called heritage tomato in the UK) is an open-pollinated (non-hybrid) heirloom cultivar of tomato. Heirloom tomatoes have become increasingly popular and more readily available in recent years. They are grown for historical interest, access to wider varieties, and by people who wish to save seeds from year to year.
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Heirloom tomato cultivars can be found in a wide variety of colors, shapes, flavors and sizes. Some cultivars can be prone to cracking or lack of disease resistance. As an example, most hybrid tomatoes have the tobacco mosaic resistance gene engineered in, but Heirlooms do not - so touching a cigarette then your heirloom tomatoes may transmit this virus to them. As with most garden plants, cultivars can be acclimated over several gardening seasons to thrive in a geographical location through careful selection and seed saving.
Heirloom seeds "Breed True", unlike the seeds of hybirdized plants. Both sides of the dna in a heirloom variety are identical, in contrast to hybridized seeds, which have a highly selected, carefully bred half (possibly with trademarked genetic engineering ) and a "poison pill" half with undesirable traits, which promotes hybrid vigor in the first generation, and many undesirable recessive traits in 2nd and sucessive generations. Heirloom tomato varieties are "open pollinating", but cross-pollination is very rare without human intervention.
Heirloom seeds can be easily collected and will continue to show the traits of the original seed because this family of tomatoes almost always self-pollinate. Collecting Heirloom seed is as easy as picking ripe tomatoes, chopping or mashing into a jar till less than 1/2 full, filling with water, shaking from time to time and allowing to decompose for 1-6 days until seeds sink to the bottom, then rinsing until the seeds are clean, and drying. This decomposition is beneficial because it discourages transmission of diseases to the seed, the drying promotes better germination, and because the seeds are easier to separate when they are clean.