Tomato

Appearance

Tomato plants are vines, initially decumbent, typically growing 180 cm or more above the ground if supported, although erect bush varieties have been bred, generally 100 cm tall or shorter. Indeterminate types are "tender" perennials, dying annually in temperate climates , although they can live up to three years in a greenhouse in some cases. Determinate types are annual in all climates.

Tomato plants are dicots, and grow as a series of branching stems, with a terminal bud at the tip that does the actual growing. When that tip eventually stops growing, whether because of pruning or flowering, lateral buds take over and grow into other, fully functional, vines.

Tomato vines are typically pubescent, meaning covered with fine short hairs. These hairs facilitate the vining process, turning into roots wherever the plant is in contact with the ground and moisture, especially if the vine's connection to its original root has been damaged or severed.

Most tomato plants have compound leaves, and are called regular leaf plants, but some cultivars have simple leaves known as potato leaf style because of their resemblance to that particular relative. Of RL plants, there are variations, such as rugose leaves, which are deeply grooved, and variegated, angora leaves, which have additional colors where a genetic mutation causes chlorophyll to be excluded from some portions of the leaves.

The leaves are 10–25 cm long, odd pinnate, with five to 9 leaflets on petioles, each leaflet up to 8 cm long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy.

Their flowers, appearing on the apical meristem, have the anthers fused along the edges, forming a column surrounding the pistil's style. Flowers in domestic cultivars can be self-fertilizing. The flowers are 1–2 cm across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of three to 12 together.

Tomato fruit is classified as a berry. As a true fruit, it develops from the ovary of the plant after fertilization, its flesh comprising the pericarp walls. The fruit contains hollow spaces full of seeds and moisture, called locular cavities. These vary, among cultivated species, according to type. Some smaller varieties have two cavities, globe-shaped varieties typically have three to five, beefsteak tomatoes have a great number of smaller cavities, while paste tomatoes have very few, very small cavities.

For propagation, the seeds need to come from a mature fruit, and be dried or fermented before germination.

Naming

The word "tomato" comes from the Spanish ''tomate'', which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word ''tomatl'' [ˈtomat͡ɬ], meaning "the swelling fruit". The native Mexican tomatillo is ''tomate'' , meaning "fat water" or "fat thing"). When Aztecs started to cultivate the Andean fruit to be larger, sweeter, and red, they called the new species ''xitomatl'' , . The scientific species epithet ''lycopersicum'' is interpreted literally from Latin in the 1753 book, ''Species Plantarum'', as "wolfpeach", where wolf is from ''lyco'' and peach is from ''persicum''.

Distribution

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés may have been the first to transfer the small yellow tomato to Europe after he captured the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City, in 1521, although Christopher Columbus may have taken them back as early as 1493. The earliest discussion of the tomato in European literature appeared in a herbal written in 1544 by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, an Italian physician and botanist, who suggested that a new type of eggplant had been brought to Italy that was blood red or golden color when mature and could be divided into segments and eaten like an eggplant—that is, cooked and seasoned with salt, black pepper, and oil. It was not until ten years later that tomatoes were named in print by Mattioli as ''pomi d'oro'', or "golden apples".:13

After the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Spanish distributed the tomato throughout their colonies in the Caribbean. They also took it to the Philippines, from where it spread to southeast Asia and then the entire Asian continent. The Spanish also brought the tomato to Europe. It grew easily in Mediterranean climates, and cultivation began in the 1540s. It was probably eaten shortly after it was introduced, and was certainly being used as food by the early 17th century in Spain.

Reproduction

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The Tomato Genetic Resource Center, Germplasm Resources Information Network, AVRDC, and numerous seed banks around the world store seed representing genetic variations of value to modern agriculture. These seed stocks are available for legitimate breeding and research efforts. While individual breeding efforts can produce useful results, the bulk of tomato breeding work is at universities and major agriculture-related corporations. These efforts have resulted in significant regionally adapted breeding lines and hybrids, such as the Mountain series from North Carolina. Corporations including Heinz, Monsanto, BHNSeed, and Bejoseed have breeding programs that attempt to improve production, size, shape, color, flavor, disease tolerance, pest tolerance, nutritional value, and numerous other traits.

Defense

The leaves, stem, and green unripe fruit of the tomato plant contain small amounts of the alkaloid tomatine, whose effect on humans has not been studied. They also contain small amounts of solanine, a toxic alkaloid found in potato leaves and other plants in the nightshade family. Because of this, the use of tomato leaves in herbal tea has been responsible for at least one death. However, solanine concentrations in foliage and green fruit are generally too small to be dangerous unless large amounts are consumed—for example, as greens.

Small amounts of tomato foliage are sometimes used for flavoring without ill effect, and the green fruit of unripe red tomato varieties is sometimes used for cooking, particularly as fried green tomatoes. There are also tomato varieties with fully ripe fruit that is still green. Compared to potatoes, the amount of solanine in unripe green or fully ripe tomatoes is low. However, even in the case of potatoes, while solanine poisoning resulting from dosages several times normal human consumption has been demonstrated, actual cases of poisoning from excessive consumption of potatoes are rare.

Tomato plants can be toxic to dogs if they eat large amounts of the fruit, or chew plant material.

Evolution

The tomato is native to western South America. Wild versions were small, like cherry tomatoes, and most likely yellow rather than red. The Spanish first introduced tomatoes to Europe, where they became used in Spanish and Italian food. The French and northern Europeans erroneously thought them to be poisonous because they are a member of the deadly nightshade family. This was exacerbated by the interaction of the tomato's acidic juice with pewter plates. The leaves and immature fruit contains tomatine, which in large quantities would be toxic. However, the ripe fruit contains no tomatine.

Cultural

On 30 August 2007, 40,000 Spaniards gathered in Buñol to throw 115,000 kg of tomatoes at each other in the yearly Tomatina festival.



In Ontario, Canada, member of provincial parliament Mike Colle introduced a private member's bill in March 2016 to name the tomato as the official vegetable of the province and to designate 15 July as Tomato Day, in order to acknowledge the tomato's importance in Ontario's agriculture....hieroglyph snipped... The bill did not pass in the legislature and no official designations were made.

Tomatoes have been designated the state vegetable of New Jersey. Arkansas took both sides by declaring the ''South Arkansas Vine Ripe Pink Tomato'' both the state fruit and the state vegetable in the same law, citing both its culinary and botanical classifications. In 2009, the state of Ohio passed a law making the tomato the state's official fruit. Tomato juice has been the official beverage of Ohio since 1965. A.W. Livingston, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, played a large part in popularizing the tomato in the late 19th century; his efforts are commemorated in Reynoldsburg with an annual Tomato Festival.

Flavr Savr was the first commercially grown genetically engineered food licensed for human consumption.

The town of Buñol, Spain, annually celebrates La Tomatina, a festival centered on an enormous tomato fight. Tomatoes are a popular "nonlethal" throwing weapon in mass protests, and there was a common tradition of throwing rotten tomatoes at bad performers on a stage during the 19th century; today this is usually referenced as a metaphor. Embracing it for this protest connotation, the Dutch Socialist party adopted the tomato as their logo.

The US city of Reynoldsburg, Ohio calls itself "The Birthplace of the Tomato", claiming the first commercial variety of tomato was bred there in the 19th century.

Several US states have adopted the tomato as a state fruit or vegetable .

"Rotten Tomatoes" is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The name "Rotten Tomatoes" derives from the practice of audiences throwing rotten tomatoes when disapproving of a poor stage performance. "Rotten Tomatoes" took the tomato metaphor further by rating films as ''Certified Fresh'' if they got a score of of 75% or higher, ''Fresh'' for films with a score of 60% or higher that do not meet the requirements for the ''Certified Fresh'' seal, and ''Rotten'' for films with a score of 0–59% .