Charley Rick’s Hunt for   Wild Tomatoes

TOMATOES ARE A WONDERFUL example of how we humans created a modern fruit. Modern tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum) are far removed from their wild ancestors in both taste and appearance, and they’re also remarkably homogeneous, despite the range of colors, shapes, and flavors heirloom tomatoes exhibit. The domesticated tomato has gone through several genetic bottlenecks as travelers carried tomato seeds from the Andes in South America to Mesoamerica, then to Europe, and from there to the rest of the world. Each time people carried the tomato over a long distance, only a handful of seeds from the source location made the trip. By the time travelers and explorers introduced the tomato to Europe, cultivated tomatoes had only 5 percent of the genetic variation of their wild relatives. And yet, the modern tomato sits atop the produce heap as the No. 1 fruit vegetable — produce that’s commonly considered a vegetable, although botanically it’s a fruit — produced in the world.

IN SEARCH OF GENETIC DIVERSITY

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