Engineering News

But I love the seeds in tomatoes, I hate the meaty, seedless, tasteless tomatoes I have always looked for heirloom tomatoes plants.

Maybe they can do a tomatoloupe, with all the seeds in the middle...

They'd probally hosed that up too, and come up with one that has a pit, and announce it as a breakthrough.......as though that's what we want.

The best and sweetest tomatoes come from Scotland, while I hate those big tasteless tomatoes that are on the shelves in most supermarkets, and if you want the best tomatoes then grow them yourself, they are always the best. And we don't want any GM tomatoes over here in England, no thankyou!!!

Spencer.

Here in Indiana we have a tomato called a Hoosier big boy that is just as sweet and tasty as the best tomato that I have ever tasted bar non. My grandfather use to come back to Indiana every 5 years to get 5gal. buckets of Indiana soil to plant his plants in because no matter how he tried the soil in Florida made the tomato's very acidic don't know what it is about Indiana or midwest soil but they grow some of the best tomatoes I have ever tasted here.Just what we need is some one monkeying around with the DNA and screw it up and make it where you have to buy seeds from one of the great seed companies,that are litigating against all of our local seed suppliers for accidental cross pollination of seed. when they put their seed plots next to other seed suppliers to make it happen just what do they think is going to happen. It's so that they can sue them out of the business/existence so they own the whole world's seed/food supply. Then you pay whatever they want you to pay. Duke.

it where you have to buy seeds from one of the great seed companies,that are litigating against all of our local seed suppliers for accidental cross pollination of seed.

'Monsanto', I hope I didn't say that out loud

ME TOO! But you just know they are looking over your shoulder all the time don't you know?

why, did you hear something? ^{said in a paranoid way as I look over my shoulder.}

Article from Wired

Homer Simpson is not a guy people want to emulate. "D'oh!" is his most-used expression, and with good reason. His endeavors tend to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Nevertheless, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, dreamed of bringing to life his favorite The Simpsons episode, one from 1999 in which Homer grows "tomacco," a combination tomato-tobacco plant. Even though it tastes foul and has a brown, gooey center, the entire town becomes addicted to the fruit after one bite, and Homer gets rich.

Baur grafted a tomato plant onto tobacco roots, and voilà, he had a real, live tomacco plant. The two plants can successfully become one because they come from the same plant family, which also includes eggplant and the deadly nightshade. The tomacco even bore fruit, although Baur said he believes it's poisonous because it likely contains a lethal amount of nicotine.

"I've got this one plant growing, and it's blooming again," Baur said. "I accidentally left the tomacco on the kitchen table, and my wife yelled at me, 'Get that thing out of the kitchen, you knucklehead!' Because it looks like a regular tomato."

Earlier in the summer, Baur tried grafting a tobacco plant onto a tomato root and got a "tobato," but when he removed the bandage from the graft it fell apart and later died.

But the tomacco grafted together well. Baur wanted to know if it was a true hybrid, so he asked a forensic researcher to test the plant's constitution. The results showed the leaves did indeed contain nicotine. The local Fox News station, KPTV, did a segment on Baur's accomplishment.

"He only had the one fruit, and we didn't get a chance to test that," said Roy Grimsbo, the forensic scientist who performed the test and director of Intermountain Forensic Laboratories in Portland. "We just tested the leaves. It had regular green fresh leaves."

Grimsbo did the work for free and said he hopes Baur will bring back an actual tomacco fruit for testing.

The Simpsons tomacco episode struck a chord with Baur, who is an operations analyst for a municipal waste water-treatment plant. He remembered a 1959 study he had read for a graduate chemistry class at Western Washington University in Bellingham, in which researchers crossed a tomato plant with tobacco. Since his work involves chemistry, he had saved his textbooks and was able to find the 1959 study.

"I thought, 'Aha! I bet the writer of this Simpsons show had to have seen this too,'" Baur said. "I felt a bond with that Simpsons writer."

It turns out that George Meyers, a writer for The Simpsons at the time, got a degree in biochemistry from Harvard. However, he didn't write the tomacco episode. It was written by Ian Maxtone-Graham, who majored in English at Brown University and has said in interviews that he's a huge fan of Meyers. Neither could be reached for comment.

The tomacco episode also resonated with Baur because he's not a big fan of the tobacco industry. His mother, a lifetime smoker, died of lung cancer. His father, who also smoked all his life, had one lung removed and later died of colon cancer. Baur also lost an uncle to lung cancer.

"It really showed big tobacco for what it is, and the ridiculousness of this stuff that tastes bad, but then you're addicted to it, and the lengths people will go to get it," he said.

In the episode, Bart Simpson says, "It's smooth and mild -- and refreshingly addictive," when he eats tomacco. Another scene shows Ralph taking a bite of a tomacco. "Oh, daddy, this tastes like grandma!" he says.

Baur said his kids think he's nuts, but he said he'll have the last laugh.

"We'll see who's saying 'D'oh' when I'm on the cover of TV Guide and Scientific American the same week," he said.

At least he didn't try to make "Skittlebrau."