[permaculture-oceania] Re: ADVICE REQUEST: mystery tomato sprouting

[Robyn Williamson]

I think Penny's advice about contacting the grower through Aldi is the 
way to go.  We recently found that the management of Aldi will actually 
listen to people and is most cooperative and willing to "do the right 
thing" in regard to enquiries and complaints.  At the time, we only 
wished to draw Aldi's attention to the fact that plants they were 
advertising to sell "on special" the following week were serious 
environmental weeds and after making their own enquiries they quickly 
withdrew the lot from sale, obviously at great expense and 
inconvenience.  This is highly commendable in my opinion although we 
didn't follow up on how they actually disposed of the plants.

The phenomenon of seeds germinating while still in the fruit is called 
vivipary, also known as "precocious germination" or "premature 
sprouting".  It is known that a high percentage of the seeds of 
overripe tomato fruits may exhibit vivipary and it is occasionally 
found in mature citrus.  The vigorous growth associated with first 
generation hybrids may further contribute to this phenomenon, as could 
the use of treatments like gibberellic acid (GA), a plant hormone.  GA 
treatments are heavily used in the production of table grapes, in 
particular the variety known as Thompson Seedless where larger fruits 
are produced on longer stems.  In a natural bunch of grapes, the fruits 
are packed quite close together and the whole bunch displays its 
characteristic bunch-of-grapes shape.  If the fruits are a bit dangly 
(ie. on longer stems) and quite large, you can be fairly sure they have 
been treated with GA.  I don't know if GA is used on tomatoes but it's 
probably worth checking with the grower and letting us all know.

In transgenic and hybridised tomatoes, the tendency towards vivipary is 
automatically selected against as a defective character (read: 
undesirable trait for marketing purposes).  The thing that puzzles me 
is why the sprouts went green inside the fruit, I thought direct light 
would have been needed and that they would more likely have been the 
yellowish colour of sprouted mung beans.

Robyn W

On Tuesday, July 18, 2006, at 12:00 pm, 
permaculture-oceania-request at lists.cat.org.au wrote:

>> Russ wrote: "Recently my colleague purchased 'vine ripened' tomatoes 
>> from
>> ALDI. Prior to
>> eating, she placed the tomatoes on the kitchen window sill to ripen 
>> for a
>> few days (for taste preferences, she has ripened tomatoes this way for
>> decades).  "When this most recent batch of tomatoes were cut, she 
>> noticed
>> the seeds
>> inside were sprouting, up to one centrimetre & were quite green.
>> "As she has never witnessed this before she was very concerned as to 
>> the
>> provenance of the seeds.
>

Penny wrote
> Other than 'vine ripened' was there any other description?   Truss 
> tomatoes,
> loose or in their boxes? or a plastic packet with the growers' name on 
> a
> label?  Grown in Australia?
>
> Most truss tomatoes are hydroponically grown from hybrid seed.
>
> Why not ask Aldi?  Their HO is in western Sydney and there might be a
> contact through their website..
>
> I had strawberry plants in my own garden whose external seeds actually
> sprouted two little leaves each which mystified me, but only a few were
> affected..
>

CONTACT DETAILS:

Robyn Williamson
robinet at aapt.net.au
Local Seed Network Coordinator
NORTH WESTERN SYDNEY COMMUNITY SEED SAVERS
mobile:  0409 151 435
ph/fx:  (612) 9629 3560
http://www.seedsavers.net
http://www.communityfoods.org.au
http://www.communitygarden.org.au
http://www.freewebs.com/bidjiwong

I think we risk becoming the best informed society that has ever died of
ignorance. *-Reuben Blades*