Although appearing less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins, heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year--they are often green and striped, or have plenty of bumps and bruises--heirlooms are more flavorful and thus in increasing demand.

This Questions becomes very easy if 2 things are known - sentence structure & focus on meaning.
The intended meaning: It presents a contrast. Although heirloom tomatoes appear less appetizing than their supermarket cousins (fact), they are more flavorful & in increasing demand (is the contrast).

Splitting the sentence:
1. Although appearing less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins, heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year. SV error. No verb for subject Heirloom tomatoes.
2. they are often green and striped, or (they) have plenty of bumps and bruises. SV pair looks ok.
3. heirlooms are more flavorful and thus in increasing demand. SV pair in agreement.
Pronoun "they" logically refers to noun heirloom tomatoes, because author is presenting a fact/contrast about heirloom tomatoes.

POE:
(A) Although appearing less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins, heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year. No verb for this clause.
(B) Although heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year, appear less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins. Correct choice with proper SV Pair.
(C) Although they appear less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins, heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the pervious year. No verb for noun heirloom tomatoes
(D) Grown from seeds saved during the previous year, heirloom tomatoes appear less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins. This sentence seems grammatically correct (other than usage of ; ) but loses the contrast per original sentence..
(E) Heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year, although they appear less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins. This seems again IC and Heirloom tomatoes has no verb
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To the original poster: this question is very confusingly transcribed. Unlike the Official Guide, which uses an em-dash (the big dashy looking thing) to separate the parenthetical phrase beginning '...they are often green', your question uses an em-dash (which you interpreted as a hyphen) to separate two independent clauses, a grammatical nicety that would lead straight to answer is (D). The answer was (B) however, and my head was spinning trying to figure out how that could be the case. Surely, joining a dependent clause to an independent clause is verboten. What I did not see was the hyphen hidden, without any intervening spaces, between bruises and heirlooms.

Only after I hunted down question #132 in the OG did I realize that the sentence was very different from the one transcribed here. There are two distinct em-dashes, as I've faithfully recapitulated below :

Although appearing less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins, heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year--they are often green and striped, or have plenty of bumps and bruises--heirlooms are more flavorful and thus in increasing demand.

(A) Although appearing less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins, heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year
(B) Although heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year, appear less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins
(C) Although they appear less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins, heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the pervious year
(D) Grown from seeds saved during the previous year, heirloom tomatoes appear less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins
(E) Heirloom tomatoes, grown from seeds saved during the previous year, although they appear less appetizing than most of their round and red supermarket cousins

Explanation:

A good way to attack this question is to ignore the parenthetical phrase, "they are often green and striped...". Instead we need to focus on the two parts of the sentence, i.e. the part that comes before the first dash and the part that comes after the second dash. Notice the subordinating conjunction, 'although...' This suggests that the first clause needs to be a dependent clause that connects grammatically to the independent clause, "heirlooms are more flavorful..."

(A) Here is an attempt to make the underlined part a combination of a dependent clause ("Although appearing...") and an independent clauses ("heirloom tomatoes). However 'heirloom tomatoes' an independent clause does not make.

(B) "Although...appear less appetizing..." is a dependent clause. This matches up well with the independent clause following the second dash (the non-underlined part). The Answer.

(C) Same problem as (A).

(D) This answer choice forms an independent clause. Two independent clauses cannot be joined by a parenthetical comment (regardless of whether that comment is separated by em-dashes--as seen here--commas, or even parentheses). On the other hand, you can use just one em-dash to separate independent clauses (which is how I originally interpreted the question, and was thus drawn to (D)).

(E) Sounds awkward by placing 'heirloom tomatoes' before the although.

Hope that helps!
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Christopher Lele
Magoosh Test Prep

I am unable to understand you reasoning behind the redundancy issue:



In B, heirloom tomatoes is mentioned in the underlined portions as well...

You may perhaps like to read the sentence in full- both the underlined and non-underlined portions put together. For the sake of clarity just remove the modifiers and the parenthetics that are not contributory but just descriptive.
Choice B is a complex sentence, with the structure of a subordinate clause followed by a major clause that appears in the non-underlined part. The first heirloom tomatoes is the subject of the subordinate clause with its own verb appear and the second heirloom is the subject of the major clause with its verb are more flavorful. Both heirloom subjects have been served with their own verbs and hence there is no redundancy

You have to decide what that phrase heirloom tomatoes stands and how many times it appears in the given context. If it is within the underlined part and stands for the subject of a clause within the underlined portion, then it is ok. On the contrary, if it is within the underlined part and still stands for the subject of the major clause that is outside the underline, then it turns dangling and redundant in this context, because the major clause is already having a subject.
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This makes perfect sense , but I also had a doubt :

Doesn't this problem also create a pronoun ambiguity with the usage of "they" .

Ideally, they should refer to the heirloom tomatoes.

So can't this be one of the ways to eliminate bad answer choices?
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