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'TomTato' tomato and potato plant unveiled in UK

T

takeru

Golden Member
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-24281192

A plant that produces both tomatoes and potatoes, called the TomTato, has been developed for the UK market.

Ipswich-based horticultural firm Thompson and Morgan said the hybrid plants were not genetically modified.

Similar plants have been created in the UK, but the firm said it was thought to be the first time they had been produced on a commercial scale.

Guy Barter, of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), said it was looking at the plant with "real interest".

Mr Barter said many of these plants - created by a technique known as grafting - had been created before but taste had previously been a problem.

"We're looking at it with real interest because Thompson and Morgan are a really reputable firm with a lot to lose, but I wouldn't rule out that it could be a very valuable plant to them," said Mr Barter, who is a contributor to BBC Gardener's World.

"In the past we've never had any faith in the plants - they've not been very good - but grafting has come on leaps and bounds in recent years.

"Many people don't have that much space in their gardens and I imagine this sort of product would appeal to them."

Thompson and Morgan director Paul Hansord claimed the tomatoes were tastier than most shop-bought tomatoes and said the plant had taken a decade of work.

"It has been very difficult to achieve because the tomato stem and the potato stem have to be the same thickness for the graft to work," he said.

"It is a very highly skilled operation. We have seen similar products. However, on closer inspection the potato is planted in a pot with a tomato planted in the same pot - our plant is one plant and produces no potato foliage."

The firm said the plants last for one season and by the time the tomatoes are ready for picking, the potatoes can be dug up.

It added both ends of the plant had been tested for alpha-solanine - a poison that can be produced in both crops depending on growing and storage conditions - and it had been certified as safe.

A similar product, dubbed the "Potato Tom", was launched in garden centres in New Zealand this week.
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So you grow your tomatoes, pluck them off to grow more - nope, wait, you have to pull it up to get your potatoes, so bye bye tomato plant? :hmm:

Still neat that they could make it happen, especially without genetic modification :thumbsup:
 
Kaido said:
So you grow your tomatoes, pluck them off to grow more - nope, wait, you have to pull it up to get your potatoes, so bye bye tomato plant? :hmm:
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yeah that was my thought. It doesn't sound like a good idea.

IronWing said:
It's fries and ketchup in one convenient package!
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whaa!? this item is Brilliant! I take back what i said about it not being a good idea!
 
What a waste of effort, though I suppose there's a niche market. Open letter to Monsanto:

Dear Monsanto:

Please give me a round-up ready genetically modified plant seeds so that I can stick the seeds in the ground, get potatoes under ground, and tomatoes above ground. Hi yielding. Preferably potato very similar in nutrition, taste, and texture to a russet potato, and a tomato similar in nutrition, taste, and texture to a roma tomato. Better yet, since you don't want me reusing seeds, make the plants such that the romas contain absolutely no seeds at all. Also, add in blight resistance. I'd pay up to $1 per seed. Thank you.

Sincerely, DrPizza

p.s. BIG roma tomatoes, not lots of little roma tomatoes like whatever the crappy plants I purchased this year were. Whoever sold those romas, that appear closer in size to cherry tomatoes needs to destroy all of that seed stock. I don't want to spend 3 hours peeling enough tomatoes for 10 quarts of sauce ever again.
 
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Grafted?

Well then that means the seeds from the plant will not produce another TomTato plant, but rather a plain tomato plant. Or of course plant pieces of the potatoes to grow plain potato plants.

I like growing veggies which I can save seeds and plant again next year, and each year they become more acclimated to my particular climate/soil so they grow better each year.
 
SagaLore said:
Tomacco would have been better...
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tumblr_lr7itddbtD1qe3q51o1_400.gif
 
sdifox said:
Are they grafting every single plant?
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Yep.

This whole thing is pointless. Cool as a high school science project, not so cool as a large scale production.

They would have been better off grafting tomatoes onto bush bean rootstock so it self-supplied nitrogen and you could just keep trimming back the plant to keep it going.
 
WelshBloke said:
Grafted plant that lasts one season and does the job (slightly worse) than two easily grown cheap plants.
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It does. I have no idea why they bothered with this. Seems like a time intensive and pointless exercise just to get a novelty item on the shelves.
 
PowerYoga said:
It does. I have no idea why they bothered with this. Seems like a time intensive and pointless exercise just to get a novelty item on the shelves.
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If you didn't already see it, look up the article/video on the "Grapple", which is a grape flavor infused apple. 🙄
 
SagaLore said:
If you didn't already see it, look up the article/video on the "Grapple", which is a grape flavor infused apple. 🙄
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and wtf does a grapple have to do with grafting a tomato and potato plant together, neither of which would affect the taste of one another?
 
It's certainly possible to do this without genetic modification. Tomatoes and potatoes are closely related. So are eggplants. They're all from the genus solanum, a type of nightshade.
 
Next up...

The Cilmatoion.

It's a plant that grows tomato fruit, has cilantro for leaves and onions in it's roots. It's salsa in a pot! Just add your own peppers. 😀
 
PowerYoga said:
It does. I have no idea why they bothered with this. Seems like a time intensive and pointless exercise just to get a novelty item on the shelves.
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I tend to agree with this statement, but I wonder if the exact same thing was said when they were developing grafted trees, and we can see how that turned out.

It is easy to forget, living here in the United States, that some places are really strapped for land and every little thing available to increase useful density of land might eventually win in a cost/benefit scenario.

There are lots of useful plants in the solanaceae family and I am glad they are looking at options, that seem utterly ridiculous at the moment, to make sure these staple foodcrops will stick around.
 
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