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Attack of the 50ft Tomato

May 12, 2008 Barbara No comments

Have your kids

ever wondered how some people can grow killer tomatos? Okay, perhaps not man-eating, but really big huge bleeping tomatos? Ask your kids what they think, and then tell them:

Turns out there’s a specific gene that’s responsible. To wit:

… The secret behind growing large tomatoes lies not in the fertilizer or the perfect soil conditions, but in just a few genetic changes that over time have resulted in tomatoes 1,000 times bigger than their wild ancestors, U.S. researchers said on Sunday.

Without these changes, tomatoes would be little more than berries on a bush.

“The cherry tomato would be considered very large compared to what is found in the wild,” said plant geneticist Steven Tanksley of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

Tanksley has been working to understand the genetic changes that allowed humans to transform wild tomatoes — which are naturally about the size of a blueberry — into modern varieties such as the beefsteak tomato, which can weigh …MORE…

What I want to know is the truth about those square watermelons….