Fruit or vegetable?
- The tomato plant originated in America.
- For botanists, a tomato is classified as a fruit but many people suggest it is a vegetable.
- The tomato belongs to the nightshade family, due to it’s high amount of lycopene, which gives the tomato a reddish colour.
- Tomato plants grow around 1-3 meters (3-10 feet) in height.
- There are thousands of tomato cultivars – around 7500!
- Tomatoes can be red, orange, yellow, green, pink, purple, black or white in colour.
- China grows the most tomatoes in the world (41, 879, 684 tonnes in 2010).
- When ripe, a tomato should be used within 1-2 days.
- A tomato plant is normally vine like with yellow flowers.
- The heaviest recorded tomato weighed 3.51 kg (7 lb 2 oz), in 1981.
Bibliography:
Tomato 12 November 2012, Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato>
