IADIZA   20886
INSTITUTO ARGENTINO DE INVESTIGACIONES DE LAS ZONAS ARIDAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
capítulos de libros
Título:
History, origin and early cultivation of tomato (Solanaceae)
Autor/es:
PERALTA, I. E. & D. M. SPOONER.
Libro:
In Genetic Improvement of Solanaceous Crops, Vol. 2 Tomato
Editorial:
Science Publishers Inc, USA,
Referencias:
Lugar: Eds: M.K. Razdan and Autar K. Mattoo; Año: 2007; p. 1 - 27
Resumen:
Tomato is a major crop of world economy and supplies essential nutrients in human diets. There have long existed controversies regarding the place of domestication, early history, and taxonomy of tomato. The wild tomato species are native to western South America from Ecuador south to northern Chile and the Galápagos Islands. The putative progenitor of the cultivated species (Solanum lycopersicum = Lycopersicon esculentum) currently is widespread throughout warm regions of the world, but many of these are recent introductions. There are two competing hypotheses of the place of domestication of tomato, one supporting Peru, another in Mexico. While the Mexican origin is reasonable, we cannot discount a Peruvian origin, or even parallel domestication in both areas. Tomatoes were first recorded outside the Americas in Italy in 1544. They were cultivated first as an ornamental or curiosity plants and thought by many to be poisonous. It was first accepted as a vegetable in southern Europe during the late 16th century. The first European cultivars had yellow to red flattened fruits with deep furrows, and flowers with stigmas exserted from the anther tube. Derived cultivars had a wider range of fruit colors and shapes, smoother fruits, and stigmas included in the anther tube that led to increased fruit set but reduced the genetic variation of the crop. The taxonomy of tomato always has been controversial. This controversy involves not only generic placement in Lycopersicum or Solanum, but also hypotheses of interspecific relationships. Recent molecular data support treatment of tomato in Solanum (as we treat it here), and support allogamy, self incompatibility, and green fruits as primitive in tomatoes, and support four species in the formerly recognized S. peruvianum.