Welcome!
Welcome! Tomatoes are in many of our favorite foods, from soup to salad to pizza. But where did they come from? The plants we know now as tomatoes were domesticated from wild plants native to the Americas. This group of a dozen beautiful, diverse wild relatives share many characteristics with the tomatoes we know, but also many differences. On this site you can see many examples of this beautiful natural diversity (Traits), while exploring information about the ecology (Ecology) and evolutionary history (Evolution) of this closely related group.
Understanding and conserving this natural diversity is essential, both for its own sake and because these wild species are an important source of natural genetic variation for future improvement of our crop varieties.
Links
Here are some other websites that also contain information about natural diversity and genetic variation in the relatives of tomato:
- Solanaceae Source: A web resource designed to provide information about evolutionary relationships and biological variation in the species within the family Solanaceae. This family includes the wild tomatoes, but also groups such as potato, pepper, tobacco, Petunia, and more.
- The SOL Genomics Network: A website that contains genetic variation data for wild tomatoes and their relatives, including access to the whole genome sequence of the domesticated tomato, information on individual genes in tomato and its relatives, and associated data on trait variation.
- Moyle Lab website