48 Fun Facts About Tomato

Botanically, what kind of fruit is a tomato?

A berry: botanically the tomato is a fleshy fruit formed from a single ovary with its seeds embedded in the pulp, the definition of a berry, as are grapes and bananas.

The tomato belongs to which plant family, alongside potatoes, tobacco and chili peppers?

Nightshade: the family Solanaceae also includes deadly nightshade and mandrake, which is why many early Europeans assumed the new fruit was poisonous and grew it only as an ornamental.

From which language does the word 'tomato' ultimately come?

Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, gave Spanish 'tomate' from 'tomatl'; Nahuatl speakers distinguished the large red fruit as 'xitomatl'.

The wild ancestor of the tomato, Solanum pimpinellifolium, is native to which region?

Western South America: the currant-sized wild species grows along the Pacific coast of Peru, Ecuador and northern Chile; domestication probably passed through a cherry-sized intermediate form.

Which conquistador's 1521 capture of Tenochtitlan set the tomato on its way to Europe?

Hernán Cortés took Tenochtitlan in 1521; the friar Bernardino de Sahagún later described Aztec markets selling large, small, sweet, serpent and nipple-shaped tomatoes in colours from red to yellow.

Who wrote the earliest known European mention of the tomato, in a 1544 herbal?

Pietro Andrea Mattioli, a Sienese physician, described the new fruit in his 1544 commentary on Dioscorides as a kind of eggplant; his 1554 edition coined the name 'pomi d'oro'.

Bread rubbed with ripe tomato and olive oil is the signature snack of which Spanish region?

Catalonia: pa amb tomàquet, bread rubbed with ripe tomato and dressed with olive oil and salt, is the everyday Catalan snack served across Barcelona's bars.

The earliest known cookbook with tomato recipes was published in 1692 in which city?

Naples: Antonio Latini's Lo scalco alla moderna, published there in 1692, includes a 'Spanish-style' tomato sauce, the earliest known tomato recipes in a European cookbook.

The San Marzano tomato is grown near which volcano?

Vesuvius: San Marzano tomatoes grow in the volcanic soils of the Agro Sarnese-Nocerino at its foot; legend says the first seed arrived in 1770 as a gift from Peru to the Bourbon kingdom of southern Italy.

Tomato, mozzarella and basil top which classic Neapolitan pizza?

Margherita: legend credits Raffaele Esposito with making it for Queen Margherita of Savoy during her visit to the city, its tomato, mozzarella and basil echoing the Italian flag's red, white and green.

Which justice wrote the unanimous Nix v. Hedden opinion?

He held that 'fruit' and 'vegetable' in the Tariff Act carried their ordinary, not botanical, meaning.

What percentage of a raw tomato is water?

95%: raw tomato is about 94 to 95 grams of water per 100 grams by USDA measurement; carbohydrates make up most of the rest, at about 4 percent.

Which pigment gives ripe tomatoes their red colour?

Lycopene, a red carotenoid, colours ripe tomatoes; unusually, cooking breaks down cell walls and makes more of it available for the body to absorb.

Which gas, released by the fruit itself, triggers tomato ripening?

Ethylene, a gaseous plant hormone the fruit produces, triggers ripening; commercial green tomatoes are gassed with it, and a paper bag traps it to ripen tomatoes at home.

Which country led world tomato production in 2023, growing about 36 percent of the 192 million tonnes?

China grew roughly a third of the world's 2023 tomato crop, far ahead of any other country; within the US, California's processing crop and Florida's fresh-market crop dominate.

Which plant breeder introduced the Paragon in 1870, the first of many commercial tomato varieties?

Alexander Livingston released the Paragon in 1870 and went on to develop more than a dozen varieties; his hometown of Reynoldsburg holds an annual Tomato Festival and calls itself the Birthplace of the Tomato.

Which US state made the tomato its official fruit in 2009 and tomato juice its official beverage in 1965?

Ohio adopted tomato juice as its official beverage in 1965 and the tomato as its official fruit in 2009, honouring a crop that Reynoldsburg breeders helped commercialise.

Which state made its Vine Ripe Pink Tomato both state fruit and state vegetable in one law?

Arkansas designated the South Arkansas Vine Ripe Pink Tomato its official fruit and official vegetable in 1987, citing both the botanical and the culinary classification.

What was the first commercially available genetically modified food, licensed in 1994?

Flavr Savr was engineered to ripen without softening so it could stay on the vine longer; the FDA cleared it in May 1994, but high costs killed it off by 1997.

Which Californian company developed the first GM tomato in the 1980s?

Calgene, based in Davis, used Agrobacterium to insert an antisense copy of the polygalacturonase gene, blocking the enzyme that softens ripening fruit.

Which tomato cultivar had its complete genome published in Nature in 2012?

Heinz 1706, a processing variety from the ketchup maker, was the reference plant whose genome the international Tomato Genome Consortium reported in Nature in May 2012.

What did the 'u' mutation behind uniformly red modern tomatoes cost the fruit?

Sweetness and flavour: the mutation disables the GLK2 gene, so fruit chloroplasts make less sugar and fewer flavour compounds; growers accepted the trade for fruit with no green shoulders.

Who moved the tomato into its own genus in 1768, naming it Lycopersicon esculentum?

Philip Miller, head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden, coined Lycopersicon esculentum in his 1768 Gardener's Dictionary; genetics later vindicated Linnaeus's Solanum, so it is Solanum lycopersicum again.

Which vegetable is the tomato's closest relative, forming a tight clade with it inside Solanum?

Potato: the two share a recent common ancestor within Solanum, and a 2025 genomic study found the potato lineage arose from an ancient hybridisation involving a tomato-line ancestor.

Which insects are cultured in greenhouses to pollinate tomatoes?

Bumblebees buzz-pollinate, vibrating their flight muscles to shake pollen loose, which tomato flowers need; before hives were sold commercially in the late 1980s, growers vibrated plants by hand.

Handling which product can spread a common virus to tomato plants?

Cigarettes can carry tobacco mosaic virus, which survives curing; smokers' hands pass it to tomato plants, mottling and wrinkling the leaves, since tomato and tobacco are close relatives.

Which thick-walled tomato type, favoured for paste and sauces, has few small seed cavities?

Plum tomatoes such as Roma have thick, meaty walls and only a couple of small seed cavities, which suits them to paste and sauce; beefsteaks have many cavities.

What is the term for open-pollinated, non-hybrid tomato varieties like Brandywine and Cherokee Purple?

Mortgage Lifter, Green Zebra and Black Krim are others; British growers say 'heritage'.

What is the traditional Californian method of growing Early Girl tomatoes without irrigation called?

Dry-farming: plants are established on winter-moistened soil and given no summer irrigation, forcing deep roots; the stress yields smaller, intensely flavoured Early Girls prized by Bay Area restaurants.

La Tomatina, the giant tomato fight, takes place in which Spanish town?

Buñol, a town of about 9,000 near Valencia, has staged the fight on a Wednesday each summer since the mid-1940s; Franco's regime banned it in the 1950s for lacking religious meaning.

What must be knocked off a greased pole before the La Tomatina tomato battle can begin?

The 'Palo Jabón' has revellers climbing on each other while being hosed with water.

La Tomatina is always held on the last Wednesday of which month?

August: the fight is fixed to the last Wednesday of August, alongside the town's patron-saint festivities, and the tomato trucks roll for about an hour.

Which classic cocktail is built on vodka and tomato juice?

Bloody Mary: vodka, tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce and spices; made with gin it is a Red Snapper, with tequila a Bloody Maria, and without alcohol a Virgin Mary.

At the King Cole Room of which New York hotel did Fernand Petiot claim to perfect the Bloody Mary in 1934?

St. Regis: Petiot ran its King Cole Bar from 1934, where the drink was first sold as the 'Red Snapper'; he said George Jessel's version was 'nothing but vodka and tomato juice'.

Which company popularised condensed tomato soup, introducing it in 1897?

Campbell chemist John T. Dorrance devised condensed soup in 1897, with tomato among the first five flavours; Andy Warhol's 1962 Campbell's Soup Cans turned the label into an icon.

Early ketchups were made from what, before tomatoes took over?

Mushrooms, walnuts and oysters were the bases of 18th-century British ketchups, thin fermented sauces; the word likely comes from a Hokkien term for fish brine, and one early tomato recipe even kept anchovies.

Ketchup is famously hard to pour because it is what kind of fluid?

Non-Newtonian: ketchup's viscosity falls under stress (shear-thinning), so it sits stubbornly until a shake or a firm squeeze suddenly sends it flowing.

Which 1824 cookbook by Jefferson's cousin Mary Randolph printed a tomato ketchup recipe?

The Virginia Housewife (1824) included 'tomato catsup' among its tomato recipes; Jonas Yerkes is credited as the first American to sell bottled ketchup, in 1837.

In which year did Heinz first sell tomato ketchup?

1876: H. J. Heinz added tomato ketchup to a line that had begun with bottled horseradish in 1869, marketing it as a time-saver for housewives who made their own.

Heinz sold EZ Squirt ketchup in green, purple, pink and other colours until which year?

2006: Heinz launched EZ Squirt with Blastin' Green in 2000, added Funky Purple and then orange, teal, pink and Stellar Blue, before discontinuing the line in January 2006 as the novelty faded.

The 1978 spoof Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was made for less than how much?

$100,000: the San Diego spoof was shot for well under that figure, and a real helicopter crash caught on camera was written into the film as a 'kamikaze tomato' strike.

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991) is set in which fictional Alabama town's cafe?

Whistle Stop: the Whistle Stop Cafe was modelled on the real Irondale Cafe near Birmingham; Fannie Flagg adapted her own 1987 novel, and the film grossed about $119 million on an $11 million budget.

Which cold Spanish tomato soup is served in hot weather?

Gazpacho, the Andalusian blend of raw tomato, cucumber, pepper, bread, garlic and olive oil, is served chilled; Spain was the first European country to take the tomato into its cooking.

Where may the largest single tomato plant ever grown have been located, as a 'tomato tree'?

Disney World's greenhouses at Epcot's The Land pavilion grew a single 'tomato tree' that set a Guinness record with more than 32,000 tomatoes harvested in a single year.

Which taste, from glutamates, makes the tomato so useful in cooking?

Umami, the savoury taste of glutamates, is abundant in ripe tomatoes, whose glutamate content rises as they ripen; it is why they anchor pasta sauces, salsas and soups.

Blossom-end rot, the dark patch on a tomato's base, stems from a shortage of which nutrient?

Calcium: blossom-end rot appears when the growing fruit cannot draw enough calcium, usually because irregular watering disrupts uptake, so it is more often a watering problem than a soil deficiency.

What does the species name lycopersicum, first used by the ancient physician Galen, mean?

Wolf peach: from Greek lykos (wolf) and persikon (peach); Galen's plant has never been identified, and a 16th-century Italian botanist merely guessed it might be the tomato.

The Chinese name for the tomato, fānqié, literally means what?

Foreign eggplant: 番 (fān) marks things that came from abroad and 茄 (qié) is the eggplant, a close relative; the tomato arrived there by the early 1600s, probably via the Philippines or Macau.