The tomato (, ; Solanum lycopersicum) is a plant whose fruit is an edible berry that is eaten as a vegetable. The tomato is a member of the nightshade family that includes tobacco, potato, and chili peppers. It originated from western South America, and may have been domesticated there, in Mexico, or in Central America. The Spanish introduced tomatoes to Eurasia in the Columbian exchange in the 16th century.
Tomato plants are vines, largely annual, and vulnerable to frost, though sometimes living longer in greenhouses. The flowers can self-fertilize. Modern varieties have been bred to ripen uniformly red, in a process that has impaired the fruit's sweetness and flavor. There are thousands of cultivars, varying in size, color, shape, and flavor. Tomatoes are attacked by many insect pests and nematodes and are subject to diseases caused by viruses, mildew, and blight fungi.
The tomato has a strong savory umami flavor and is an important ingredient in cuisines around the world. Tomatoes are widely used in sauces for pasta and pizza, in soups such as gazpacho and tomato soup, in salads and condiments like salsa and ketchup, and in various curries. Tomatoes are also consumed as juice and in beverages such as the Bloody Mary cocktail.
Naming Etymology The word tomato comes from the Spanish , which in turn comes from the Nahuatl word . The specific name lycopersicum, meaning 'wolf peach', originated with Galen, who used it to denote a plant that has never been identified. Luigi Anguillara speculated in the 16th century that Galen's lycopersicum might be the tomato, and despite the impossibility of this identification, lycopersicum entered scientific use as a name for the fruit.
Pronunciation The usual pronunciations of tomato are (in North American English) and (in British English). The word's dual pronunciations were immortalized in Ira and George Gershwin's 1937 song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" ("You like and I like / You like and I like ").
History
The likely wild ancestor of the tomato, the red-fruited Solanum pimpinellifolium, is native to western South America, namely Chile, Peru, and Ecuador. The exact date of domestication is unknown; the site of domestication was either western South America, thought probable by some authorities, or Central America.
The resulting domesticated plant, ancestral to the modern large-fruited tomato varieties, was probably the cherry tomato, S. lycopersicum var. cerasiforme. However, genomic analysis suggests that the domestication process may have been more complex than this. S. lycopersicum var. cerasiforme may have existed before domestication, while traits supposedly typical of domestication may have been reduced in that variety and then reselected (in a case of convergent evolution) in the cultivated tomato. The analysis predicts that var. cerasiforme appeared around 78,000 years ago, while the cultivated tomato originated around 7,000 years ago (5,000 BCE), with substantial uncertainty, making it unclear how humans may have been involved in the process.
The Spanish first introduced tomatoes to Europe, where they became used in Spanish food. Elsewhere in Europe, its first use was ornamental, not least because it was understood to be related to the nightshades and assumed to be poisonous.
Mesoamerica
By 500 BCE, it was already being cultivated in southern Mexico and probably other areas. A large, lumpy variety of tomato, a mutation from a smoother, smaller fruit, originated in Mesoamerica, and may be the direct ancestor of some modern cultivated tomatoes.
The Aztecs raised several varieties of tomato, with red tomatoes called . Bernardino de Sahagún reported seeing a great variety of tomatoes in the Aztec market at Tenochtitlán (Mexico City): "large tomatoes, small tomatoes, leaf tomatoes, sweet tomatoes, large serpent tomatoes, nipple-shaped tomatoes", and tomatoes of all colors from the brightest red to the deepest yellow. Sahagún mentioned Aztecs cooking various sauces, some with tomatoes of different sizes, serving them in city markets: "foods sauces, hot sauces; ... with tomatoes, ... sauce of large tomatoes, sauce of ordinary tomatoes, ..."
Spanish distribution
The Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés's capture of Tenochtitlan in 1521 initiated the widespread cultural and biological interchange called the Columbian exchange. The tomato was cultivated in Europe only a few years after that event, by the 1540s, and grew easily in the Mediterranean climates. The earliest mention of the tomato in European literature appeared in Pietro Andrea Mattioli's 1544 herbal. He suggested that a new type of eggplant had been brought to Italy. He stated that it was blood-red or golden in 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. Ten years later, Mattioli named the fruits in print as , or "golden apples".
It was probably eaten shortly after it was introduced, and tomatoes were used as food by the early 17th century in Spain, as documented in the 1618 play La octava maravilla by Lope de Vega with "lovelier than ... a tomato in season".
After the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Spanish distributed the tomato throughout their colonies in the Caribbean. After they introduced it to the Philippines, it spread to Southeast Asia and then across Asia.
China The tomato was introduced to China, likely via the Philippines or Macau, in the 16th century. It was given the name 番茄 (foreign eggplant), as the Chinese named many foodstuffs introduced from abroad, but referring specifically to early introductions.
Italy
In 1548, the house steward of Cosimo de' Medici, the grand duke of Tuscany, wrote to the Medici private secretary informing him that the basket of tomatoes sent from the grand duke's Florentine estate at Torre del Gallo "had arrived safely". Tomatoes were grown mainly as ornamentals early on after they arrived in Italy. For example, the Florentine aristocrat Giovanvettorio Soderini wrote how they "were to be sought only for their beauty", and were grown only in gardens or flower beds. The tomato's ability to mutate and create new and different varieties helped contribute to its success and spread throughout Italy. However, in areas where the climate supported growing tomatoes, their habit of growing close to the ground suggested low status. They were not adopted as a staple of the peasant population because they were not as filling as other crops. Additionally, both toxic and inedible varieties discouraged many people from attempting to consume or prepare any other varieties.. In certain areas of Italy, such as Florence, the fruit was used solely as a tabletop decoration until it was incorporated into the local cuisine in the late 17th or early 18th century. The earliest discovered cookbook with tomato recipes was published in Naples in 1692, though the author had apparently obtained these recipes from Spanish sources.
Varieties were developed over the following centuries for drying, for sauce, for pizzas, and for long-term storage. These varieties are usually known for their place of origin as much as by a variety name. For example, there is the , the "hanging tomato of Vesuvius", and the well-known and highly prized San Marzano tomato grown in that region, with a European protected designation of origin certification.
Britain
Tomatoes were not grown in England until the 1590s. One of the earliest cultivators was John Gerard, a barber-surgeon. Gerard's Herbal, published in 1597, and largely plagiarized from continental sources, is also one of the earliest discussions of the tomato in England. Gerard knew the tomato was eaten in Spain and Italy. Nonetheless, he believed it was poisonous. Gerard's views were influential, and the tomato was considered unfit for eating for many years in Britain and its North American colonies. By 1820, tomatoes were described as "to be seen in great abundance in all our vegetable markets" and to be "used by all our best cooks", reference was made to their cultivation in gardens still "for the singularity of their appearance", while their use in cooking was associated with exotic Italian or Jewish cuisine. For example, in Elizabeth Blackwell's A Curious Herbal, it is described under the name "Love Apple ()" as being consumed with oil and vinegar in Italy, similar to consumption of cucumbers in the UK. In 1963, The New York Times gave an explanation of the name 'Love Apple' as a French misreading of the Italian ("the Moors' apple") as , ("apple of love").
Middle East The tomato was introduced to cultivation in the Middle East by John Barker, British consul in Aleppo .
United States
The earliest reference to tomatoes being grown in British North America is from 1710, when herbalist William Salmon saw them in what is today South Carolina, perhaps introduced from the Caribbean. By the mid-18th century, they were cultivated on some Carolina plantations, and probably in other parts of the Southeast. Thomas Jefferson, who ate tomatoes in Paris, sent some seeds back to America. After 1860, it was often claimed that Americans believed that tomatoes were poisonous into the 1820s, but the belief was never widespread.
When Alexander W. Livingston (1821–1898) began developing the tomato as a commercial crop, he had aimed to grow tomatoes smooth in contour, uniform in size, and sweet in flavor. He eventually developed over seventeen varieties. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's 1937 yearbook declared that "half of the major varieties were a result of the abilities of the Livingstons to evaluate and perpetuate superior material in the tomato". Livingston's first breed of tomato, the Paragon, was introduced in 1870. In 1875, he introduced the Acme, said to be in the parentage of most cultivars for the next twenty-five years. Other early breeders included Henry Tilden in Iowa and a Dr. Hand in Baltimore.Boswell, Victor R. "Improvement and Genetics of Tomatoes, Peppers, and Eggplant", Yearbook of Agriculture, 1937, p. 179. U.S. Department of Agriculture. Accessed 25 May 2018/
Because of the tomato's need for heat and a long growing season, several states in the Sun Belt became major producers, particularly Florida and California. In California, tomatoes are grown under irrigation for both the fresh market and for canning and processing. The University of California, Davis's C.M. Rick Tomato Genetics Resource Center maintains a gene bank of wild relatives, monogenic mutants and genetic stocks. Research on processing tomatoes is also conducted by the California Tomato Research Institute in Escalon, California.California Tomato Research Institute. tomatonet.org In California, growers have used a method of cultivation called dry-farming, especially with Early Girl tomatoes. This technique encourages the plant to send roots deep to find existing moisture.
Description
Plant
Tomato plants are vines, becoming decumbent, and can grow up to ; bush varieties are generally no more than tall. They are tender perennials, often grown as annuals.
Tomato plants are dicots. They grow as a series of branching stems, with a terminal bud at the tip that does the actual growing. When the tip eventually stops growing, whether because of pruning or flowering, lateral buds take over and grow into new, fully functional vines. Tomato vines are typically pubescent, meaning covered with fine short hairs. The 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. The leaves are long, odd pinnate, with five to nine leaflets on petioles, each leaflet up to long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy.
Flower