Nomenclature for wild and cultivated tomatoes

PERALTA I. E.

Tampa

Taller; Tomato Breeders Round Table & Tomato Quality Workshop; 2006

Universidad de Florida

Tomatoes were introduced into Europe from the Americas and became known to botanists about the middle of the sixteenth century. Matthioli described tomatoes for the first time in 1544 using the Italian common name “Pomi d’oro”. During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century botanists recognized the close relationships of tomatoes with the genus Solanum and commonly referred to them as “Solanum pomiferum” or apple-bearing nightshade. Tournefort (1694) was the first to consider tomatoes at the generic level using the Greek term Lycopersicon. In Species Plantarum, Linnaeus (1753) was the first to consistently use binominal nomenclature; he classified tomatoes in the genus Solanum and described S. lycopersicum and S. peruvianum. Miller (1754), however, included tomatoes in Lycopersicon, criterion that numerous classical and modern authors have followed. Taxonomy has two main and often competing goals, the maintenance of nomenclatural stability (treatment in Lycopersicon) and the predictivity of natural classifications (treatment in Solanum). More recently, the treatment of tomatoes in Solanum, and indeed as a monophyletic sister group to potatoes, has been supported by several morphological and molecular data. Based on these evidences, tomatoes may be more “predictively” classified in Solanum section Lycopersicon, which includes the cultivated tomato, Solanum lycopersicum and 12 additional wild relatives, endemic to western South America from Ecuador to northern Chile, and with two endemic species in the Galápagos Islands. The delimitation and relationships of tomato species, as well as nomenclature issues will be discussed.