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Have they ever tried to crossbreed potatoes and tomatoes, like tomacco but tomato+potato, rather? (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by sopularity_fax@sopuli.xyz to c/nostupidquestions@lemmy.ca

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Pomatoes
Topatos

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 13 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 children)

You can apparently produce a graft of one onto the other, and there's apparently another technique to create a combined plant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomato

The pomato (a portmanteau of potato and tomato), also known as a tomtato, is a hybrid plant that is able to grow both tomatoes and potatoes. The most common method of creating a pomato is grafting together a tomato plant and a potato plant, both of which are members of the Solanum genus in the Solanaceae (nightshade) family. Another method is somatically fusing the two plants together.[1] Cherry tomatoes grow on the vine, while white potatoes grow in the soil from the same plant.[2]

The concept of grafting related potatoes and tomatoes so that both are produced on the same plant dates back to at least 1833.[3]

As with all grafts, this plant will not occur in nature and cannot be grown from seed, because the two parts of the plant remain genetically separate, and only rely on each other for nourishment and growth.

The somatic fusion of potato and tomato cells is also possible, though this plant cannot produce fertile seeds. The first such somatic hybrid was bred in 1978.[1][7]

I've never heard of somatic fusion before now.

Grafted pomato plants were launched in the United Kingdom in September 2013 by the horticultural mail-order company Thompson & Morgan, who sold pre-grafted plants branded as the "TomTato". The Incredible Edible nursery in New Zealand announced a "DoubleUP Potato Tom" in the same month.

[–] tal@lemmy.today 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I do kind of wonder if it's possible to hybridize each with some intermediate relative, and then hybridize the result. Not sure if that's how things work.

Tomatoes are Solanum lycopersicum. Potatoes (the type you eat) are Solanum tuberosum.

According to this, modern tomatoes were probably the result of hybridization between a wild tomato ancestor and a wild potato plant that doesn't grow tubers:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-potato-may-have-evolved-from-a-tomato-ancestor-nine-million-years-ago-genetic-study-suggests-180987091/

And potatoes and tomatoes are each other’s closest living relatives.

Zhang and his team found that wild tomato plants bred with a potato-like plant called Etuberosum around nine million years ago. Alone, neither plant had the genes to make tubers—but together, they could grow the feature. That’s because the gene that switches on tuber growth, called SP6A, comes from tomatoes, while the gene controls the growth of the underground stems that turn into tubers, called IT1, comes from Etuberosum.

That fateful hybridization, the authors suggest, occurred in the Andes mountains. At the time the plants developed the ability to make tubers, the Andes mountains were rapidly rising. The tubers allowed the potato to survive in this unforgiving habitat—and spread across the world. Tubers enable plants to reproduce without pollinators or seeds, making them adaptable.

Genetic family tree with all three species:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Geographical-distribution-and-phylogeny-of-the-Solanum-genus-a-Five-hundred-phylogenetic_fig1_361181892

https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/ca1edae2-11a4-468f-b501-9bceb1338b8f.png

collapsed inline media

It looks like Solanum etuberosum (well, modern forms of it) is still around:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum_etuberosum

Solanum etuberosum is a species of wild potato in the family Solanaceae, endemic to central Chile.

So I wonder if maybe it'd be possible to grow a fertile Solanum etuberosum x Solanum tuberosum hybrid and cross it with a fertile Solanum etuberosum x Solanum lycopersicum hybrid.

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