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top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): city build house state town Unite design home service time |
top 10 words in brain distribution (in article): produce type beverage time tube common require contain plant size |
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top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): store station power street church line train bus radio signal |
top 10 words in brain distribution (not in article): light drink lamp wine beer water bottle key lock switch |
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times more probable under house 30 20 10 6 4 2.5 1.25 1 1.25 2.5 4 6 10 20 30 times more probable under tomato (words not in the model) | |
| A house'" generally refers to a or building that is a dwelling or place for habitation by humans. The term includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to high-rise apartment buildings. However, the word can also be used as a verb ("to house"), and can have adjectival formations as well. In some contexts, "house" may mean the same as dwelling, residence, home, abode, accommodation, housing, lodging, among other meanings. The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, though households can be other social groups, such as single persons, or groups of unrelated individuals. Settled agrarian and industrial societies are composed of household units living permanently in housing of various types, according to a variety of forms of land tenure. English-speaking people generally call any building they routinely occupy "home". Many people leave their houses during the day for work and recreation but typically return to them to sleep or for other activities. History. The oldest house in the world is approximately from 10,000 BC and was made of mammoth bones, found at Mezhirich near Kiev in Ukraine. It was probably covered with mammoth hides. The house was discovered in 1965 by a farmer digging a new basement six feet below the ground. Architect Norbert Schoenauer, in his book "6,000 Years of Housing", identifies three major categories of types of housing: the "Pre-Urban" house, the "Oriental Urban" house, and the "Acidental Urban" house. Types of Pre-Urban houses include temporary dwellings such as the Inuit igloo, semi-permanent dwellings such as the pueblo, and permanent dwellings such as the New England homestead. "Oriental Urban" houses include houses of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and traditional urban houses in China, India, and Islamic cities. "Occidental Urban" houses include medieval urban houses, the Renaissance town house, and the houses, tenements and apartments of the 19th and 20th centuries. Houses of that time were generally made of simple and raw materials. Structure. The developed world in general features three basic types of house that have their own ground-level entry and private open space, and usually on a separately titled parcel of land: In addition, there are various forms of attached housing where a number of dwelling units are co-located within the same structure, which share a ground-level entry and may or may not have any private open space, such as apartments (a.k.a. flats) of various scales. Another type of housing is movable, such as houseboats, caravans, and trailer homes. In the United Kingdom, 27% of the population live in terraced houses and 32% in semi-detached houses, as of 2002. In the United States as of 2000, 61.4% of people live in detached houses and 5.6% in semi-detached houses, 26% in row houses or apartments, and 7% in mobile homes. Shape. Archaeologists have a particular interest in house shape: they see the transition over time from round huts to rectangular houses as a significant advance in optimizing the use of space, and associate it with the growth of the idea of a personal area (see personal space). Function. Some houses transcend the basic functionality of providing "a roof over one's head" or of serving as a family "hearth and home". When a house becomes a display-case for wealth and or fashion and or conspicuous consumption, we may speak of a "great house". The residence of a feudal lord or of a ruler may require defensive structures and thus turn into a fort or a castle. The house of a monarch may come to house courtiers and officers as well as the royal family: this sort of house may become a palace. Moreover, in time the lord or monarch may wish to retreat to a more personal or simple space such as a villa, a hunting lodge or a dacha. Compare the popularity of the holiday house or cottage, also known as a crib. In contrast to a relatively upper class or modern trend to ownership of multiple houses, much of human history shows the importance of multi-purpose houses. Thus the house long served as the traditional place of work (the original cottage industry site or "in-house" small-scale manufacturing workshop) or of commerce (featuring, for example, a ground floor "shop-front" shop or counter or office, with living space above). During the Industrial Revolution there was a separation of manufacturing and banking from the house, though to this day some shopkeepers continue (or have returned) to live "over the shop". Layout. Ideally, architects of houses design rooms to meet the needs of the people who will live in the house. Such designing, known as "interior design", has become a popular subject in universities. Feng shui, originally a Chinese method of situating houses according to such factors as sunlight and micro-climates, has recently expanded its scope to address the design of interior spaces with a view to promoting harmonious effects on the people living inside the house. Feng shui can also mean the 'aura' in or around a dwelling. Compare the real-estate sales concept of "indoor-outdoor flow". The square footage of a house in the United States reports the area of "living space", excluding the garage and other non-living spaces. The "square meters" figure of a house in Europe reports the area of the walls enclosing the home, and thus includes any attached garage and non-living spaces. Parts. Many houses have several rooms with specialized functions. These may include a living eating area, a sleeping area, and (if suitable facilities and services exist) washing and lavatory areas. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) often share part of the house with human beings. Most conventional modern houses will at least contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen (or kitchen area), and a living room. A typical "foursquare house" (as pictured) occurred commonly in the early history of the United States of America, with a staircase in the center of the house, surrounded by four rooms, and connected to other sections of the house (including in more recent eras a garage). The names of parts of a house often echo the names of parts of other buildings, but could typically include: Construction. In the United States, modern house-construction techniques include light-frame construction (in areas with access to supplies of wood) and adobe or sometimes rammed-earth construction (in arid regions with scarce wood-resources). Some areas use brick almost exclusively, and quarried stone has long provided walling. To some extent, aluminum and steel have displaced some traditional building materials. Increasingly popular alternative construction materials include insulating concrete forms (foam forms filled with concrete), structural insulated panels (foam panels faced with oriented strand board or fiber cement), and light-gauge steel framing and heavy-gauge steel framing. More generally, people often build houses out of the nearest available material, and often tradition and or culture govern construction-materials, so whole towns, areas, counties or even states countries may be built out of one main type of material. For example, a large fraction of American houses use wood, while most British and many European houses utilize stone or brick. In the 1900s, some house designers started using prefabrication. Sears, Roebuck & Co. first marketed their Houses by Mail to the general public in 1908. Prefab techniques became popular after World War II. First small inside rooms framing, then later, whole walls were prefabricated and carried to the construction site. The original impetus was to use the labor force inside a shelter during inclement weather. More recently builders have begun to collaborate with structural engineers who use computers and finite element analysis to design prefabricated steel-framed homes with known resistance to high wind-loads and seismic forces. These newer products provide labor savings, more consistent quality, and possibly accelerated construction processes. Lesser-used construction methods have gained (or regained) popularity in recent years. Though not in wide use, these methods frequently appeal to homeowners who may become actively involved in the construction process. They include: Energy-efficiency. In the developed world, energy-conservation has grown in importance in house-design. Housing produces a major proportion of carbon emissions (30% of the total in the UK, for example). Development of a number of types and techniques continues. They include the zero-energy house, the passive solar house, superinsulated and houses built to the "Passivhaus" standard. Earthquake protection. One tool of earthquake engineering is base isolation which is increasingly used for earthquake protection. Base isolation is a collection of structural elements of a building that should substantially decouple it from the shaking ground thus protecting the building's integrity and enhancing its seismic performance. This technology, which is a kind of seismic vibration control, can be applied both to a newly designed building and to seismic upgrading of existing structures. Normally, excavations are made around the building and the building is separated from the foundations. Steel or reinforced concrete beams replace the connections to the foundations, while under these, the isolating pads, or "base isolators", replace the material removed. While the "base isolation" tends to restrict transmission of the ground motion to the building, it also keeps the building positioned properly over the foundation. Careful attention to detail is required where the building interfaces with the ground, especially at entrances, stairways and ramps, to ensure sufficient relative motion of those structural elements. Legal issues. Buildings with historical importance have restrictions. United Kingdom. New houses in the UK are not covered by the Sale of Goods Act. When purchasing a new house the buyer has less legal protection than when buying a new car. New houses in the UK may be covered by a NHBC guarantee but some people feel that it would be more useful to put new houses on the same legal footing as other products. United States and Canada. In the US and Canada, many new houses are built in housing tracts, which provide homeowners a sense of "belonging" and the feeling they have "made the best use" of their money. However, these houses are often built as cheaply and quickly as possible by large builders seeking to maximize profits. Many environmental health issues are ignored or minimized in the construction of these structures. In one case in Benicia, California, a housing tract was built over an old landfill. Home buyers were never told, and only found out when some began having reactions to high levels of lead and chromium. Identifying houses. With the growth of dense settlement, humans designed ways of identifying houses and or parcels of land. Individual houses sometimes acquire proper names; and those names may acquire in their turn considerable emotional connotations: see for example the house of "Howards End" or the castle of "Brideshead Revisited". A more systematic and general approach to identifying houses may use various methods of house numbering. Animal houses. Humans often build "houses" for domestic or wild animals, often resembling smaller versions of human domiciles. Familiar animal houses built by humans include bird-houses, hen-houses chicken-coops and doghouses (kennels); while housed agricultural animals more often live in barns and stables. However, human interest in building houses for animals does not stop at the domestic pet. People build bat-houses, nesting-sites for wild ducks and other birds, bee houses, giraffe houses, kangaroo houses, worm houses, hermit crab houses, as well as shelters for many other animals. Shelter. Forms of (relatively) simple shelter may include: Houses and symbolism. Houses may express the circumstances or opinions of their builders or their inhabitants. Thus a vast and elaborate house may serve as a sign of conspicuous wealth, whereas a low-profile house built of recycled materials may indicate support of energy conservation. Houses of particular historical significance (former residences of the famous, for example, or even just very old houses) may gain a protected status in town planning as examples of built heritage and or of streetscape values. Plaques may mark such structures. House-ownership provides a common measure of prosperity in economics. Contrast the importance of house-destruction, tent dwelling and house rebuilding in the wake of many natural disasters. Peter Olshavsky's provides a 'pataphysical variation on the house. Heraldry. The house occurs as a rare charge in heraldry. | The Tomato'" ("Solanum lycopersicum", syn. "Lycopersicon lycopersicum" & "Lycopersicon esculentum") is an herbaceous, usually sprawling plant in the Solanaceae or nightshade family, as are its close cousins tobacco, potatoes, aubergine (eggplants), chilli peppers, and the poisonous belladonna. It is a perennial, often grown outdoors in temperate climates as an annual. Typically reaching to 1-3m (3 to 9 ft) in height, it has a weak, woody stem that often vines over other plants. The leaves are long, odd pinnate, with 5–9 leaflets on petioles, each leaflet up to long, with a serrated margin; both the stem and leaves are densely glandular-hairy. The flowers are across, yellow, with five pointed lobes on the corolla; they are borne in a cyme of 3–12 together. The tomato is native to South America and a prehistoric introduction to Central America and Southern parts of North America. Genetic evidence shows that the progenitors of tomatoes were herbaceous green plants with small green fruit with a center of diversity in the highlands of Peru. These early Solanums diversified into the ~dozen species of tomato recognized today. One species, Solanum Lycopersicum, was transported to Mexico where it was grown and consumed by prehistoric humans. The exact date of domestication is not known. Evidence supports the theory the first domesticated tomato was a little yellow fruit, ancestor of L. cerasiforme, grown by the Aztecs of Central Mexico who called it ‘xitomatl’ (pronounced zee-toe-má-tel), meaning plump thing with a navel, and later called tomatl by other Mesoamerican peoples. Aztec writings mention tomatoes were prepared with peppers, corn and salt, likely to be the original salsa recipe. Some believe Spanish explorer Cortez may have been the first to transfer the small yellow tomato to Europe after he captured the Aztec city of Tenochtítlan in 1521, now Mexico City. Yet others believe Christopher Columbus, an Italian working for the Spanish monarchy, discovered the tomato earlier in 1493. The earliest discussion of the tomato in European literature appeared in an herbal written in 1544 by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, an Italian physician and botanist, who named it pomi d’oro, golden apple. The word "tomato" comes from a word in the Nahuatl language, "tomatl". The specific name, "lycopersicum", means "wolf-peach" (compare the related species "Solanum lycocarpum", whose scientific name means "wolf-fruit", common name "wolf-apple"), as they are a major food of wild canids in South America. Early history. Two modern tomato cultivar groups, one represented by the Matt's Wild Cherry tomato, the other by currant tomatoes, originate by recent domestication of the wild tomato plants apparently native to eastern Mexico. Aztecs and other peoples in the region used the fruit in their cooking; it was being cultivated in southern Mexico and probably other areas by 500BC. It is thought that the Pueblo people believed that those who witnessed the ingestion of tomato seeds were blessed with powers of divination. The large, lumpy tomato, a mutation from a smoother, smaller fruit, originated and was encouraged in Mesoamerica. Smith states this variant is the direct ancestor of some modern cultivated tomatoes. According to Andrew F Smith's "The Tomato in America", the tomato probably originated in the highlands of the west coast of South America. Smith notes there is no evidence the tomato was cultivated or even eaten in Peru before the Spanish arrived. Spanish distribution. After the Spanish colonization of the Americas, the Spanish distributed the tomato throughout their colonies in the Caribbean. They also took it to the Philippines, whence it moved to southeast Asia and then the entire Asian continent. The Spanish also brought the tomato to Europe. It grew easily in Mediterranean climates, and cultivation began in the 1540s. It was probably eaten shortly after it was introduced, and was certainly being used as food by the early 1600s in Spain. The earliest discovered cookbook with tomato recipes was published in Naples in 1692, though the author had apparently obtained these recipes from Spanish sources. However, in certain areas of Italy, such as Florence, the fruit was used solely as tabletop decoration before it was incorporated into the local cuisine in the late 17th or early 18th century. In Britain. Tomatoes were not grown in England until the 1590s, according to Smith. One of the earliest cultivators was John Gerard, a barber-surgeon. Gerard's "Herbal", published in 1597 and largely plagiarized from continental sources, is also one of the earliest discussions of the tomato in England. Gerard knew that the tomato was eaten in Spain and Italy. Nonetheless, he believed that it was poisonous (tomato leaves and stems actually contain poisonous glycoalkaloids, but the fruit is safe). Gerard's views were influential, and the tomato was considered unfit for eating (though not necessarily poisonous) for many years in Britain and its North American colonies. But by the mid-1700s, tomatoes were widely eaten in Britain; and before the end of that century, the "Encyclopædia Britannica" stated that the tomato was "in daily use" in soups, broths, and as a garnish. In Victorian times, cultivation reached an industrial scale in glasshouses, most famously in Worthing. Pressure for housing land in the 1930s to 1960s saw the industry move west to Littlehampton, and to the market gardens south of Chichester. Over the past 15 years, the British tomato industry has declined as more competitive imports from Spain and the Netherlands have reached the supermarkets. North America. The earliest reference to tomatoes being grown in British North America is from 1710, when herbalist William Salmon reported seeing them in what is today South Carolina. They may have been introduced from the Caribbean. By the mid-18th century, they were cultivated on some Carolina plantations, and probably in other parts of the Southeast as well. It is possible that some people continued to think tomatoes were poisonous at this time; and in general, they were grown more as ornamental plants than as food. Thomas Jefferson, who ate tomatoes in Paris, sent some seeds back to America. Because of their longer growing season for this heat-loving crop, several states in the US Sun Belt became major tomato-producers, particularly Florida and California. In California tomatoes are grown under irrigation for both the fresh fruit market and for canning and processing. The University of California, Davis (UC Davis) became a major center for research on the tomato. The C.M. Rick Tomato Genetics Resource Center at UC Davis is a genebank of wild relatives, monogenic mutants and miscellaneous genetic stocks of tomato. The Center is named for the late Dr. Charles M. Rick, a pioneer in tomato genetics research. Research on processing tomatoes is also conducted by the in Escalon, CA. Production trends. 125 million tons of tomatoes were produced in the world in 2005. China, the largest producer, accounted for about one quarter of the global output, followed by United States and Turkey. For processing tomatoes, California accounts for 90% of US production and 35% of world production. According to FAOSTAT, the top producers of tomatoes (in tonnes) in 2005 were: Cultivation and uses. The tomato is now grown worldwide for its edible fruits, with thousands of cultivars having been selected with varying fruit types, and for optimum growth in differing growing conditions. Cultivated tomatoes vary in size from cherry tomatoes, about the same 1–2 cm size as the wild tomato, up to beefsteak tomatoes 10 cm or more in diameter. The most widely grown commercial tomatoes tend to be in the 5–6 cm diameter range. Most cultivars produce red fruit; but a number of cultivars with yellow, orange, pink, purple, green, black, or white fruit are also available. Multicolored and striped fruit can also be quite striking. Tomatoes grown for canning are often elongated, 7–9 cm long and 4–5 cm diameter; they are known as plum tomatoes. Roma-type tomatoes are important cultivars in the Sacramento Valley where a 120-acre Morning Star cannery handles 1.2 million pounds of tomatoes an hour during the harvest season where the fields yield about 40 tons to the acre. Tomatoes are one of the most common garden fruits in the United States and, along with zucchini, have a reputation for outproducing the needs of the grower. As in most sectors of agriculture, there is increasing demand in developed countries for organic tomatoes, as well as heirloom tomatoes, to make up for flavor and texture faults in commercial tomatoes. Quite a few seed merchants and banks provide a large selection of heirloom seeds. Tomato seeds are occasionally organically produced as well, but only a small percentage of organic crop area is grown with organic seed. The definition of a heirloom tomato is vague, but unlike commercial hybrids, all are self-pollinators who have bred true for 40 years or more. Varieties. There are a great many (around 7500) tomato varieties grown for various purposes. Heirloom strains are becoming increasingly popular, particularly among home gardeners and organic producers, since they tend to produce more interesting and flavorful crops at the cost of disease resistance, and productivity. Hybrid plants remain common, since they tend to be heavier producers and sometimes combine unusual characteristics of heirloom tomatoes with the ruggedness of conventional commercial tomatoes. Tomato varieties are roughly divided into several categories, based mostly on shape and size. "Slicing" or "globe" tomatoes are the usual tomatoes of commerce; beefsteak are large tomatoes often used for sandwiches and similar applications- their kidney-bean shape makes commercial use impractical along with a thinner skin and being not bred for a long shelf life; globe tomatoes are of the category of canners used for a wide variety of processing and fresh eating; oxheart tomatoes can range in size up to beefsteaks, and are shaped like large strawberries; plum tomatoes, or paste tomatoes (including pear tomatoes), are bred with a higher solid content for use in tomato sauce and paste and are usually oblong; pear tomatoes are obviously pear shaped and based upon the San Marzano types for a richer gourmet paste; cherry tomatoes are small and round, often sweet tomatoes generally eaten whole in salads; and grape tomatoes which are a more recent introduction are smaller and oblong used in salads. Tomatoes are also commonly classified as determinate or indeterminate. Determinate, or bush, types bear a full crop all at once and top off at a specific height; they are often good choices for container growing. Determinate types are preferred by commercial growers who wish to harvest a whole field at one time, or home growers interested in canning. Indeterminate varieties develop into vines that never top off and continue producing until killed by frost. They are preferred by home growers and local-market farmers who want ripe fruit throughout the season. As an intermediate form, there are plants sometimes known as "vigorous determinate" or "semi-determinate"; these top off like determinates but produce a second crop after the initial crop. The majority of heirloom tomatoes are indeterminate, although some determinate heirlooms exist. Most modern tomato cultivars are smooth surfaced but some older tomato cultivars and most modern beefsteaks often show pronounced ribbing, a feature that may have been common to virtually all pre-Columbian cultivars. While virtually all commercial tomato varieties are red, some tomato cultivars, especially heirlooms, produce fruit in colors other than red, including yellow, orange, pink, black, brown, ivory, white, and purple, though such fruit is not widely available in grocery stores, nor are their seedlings available in typical nurseries, but must be bought as seed, often via mail-order. Less common variations include fruit with stripes (Green Zebra), fuzzy skin on the fruit (Fuzzy Peach, Red Boar), multiple colors (Hillbilly, Burracker's Favorite, Lucky Cross), etc. There is also a considerable gap between commercial and home-gardener cultivars; home cultivars are often bred for flavor to the exclusion of all other qualities, while commercial cultivars are bred for such factors as consistent size and shape, disease and pest resistance, and suitability for mechanized picking and shipping. Tomatoes grow well with 7 hours of sunlight a day. A fertilizer with the ratio 5-10-10 can be used for extra growth, but manure or compost works well too. Diseases and pests. Tomato cultivars vary widely in their resistance to disease. Modern hybrids focus on improving disease resistance over the heirloom plants. One common tomato disease is tobacco mosaic virus, and for this reason smoking or use of tobacco products are discouraged around tomatoes, although there is some scientific debate over whether the virus could possibly survive being burned and converted into smoke. Various forms of mildew and blight are also common tomato afflictions, which is why tomato cultivars are often marked with a combination of letters which refer to specific disease resistance. The most common letters are: V'" -"verticillium" wilt, F'" -"fusarium" wilt strain I, FF'" -"fusarium" wilt strain I & II, N'" -"nematodes", T'" -"tobacco mosaic virus", and A'" -"alternaria". Another particularly dreaded disease is curly top, carried by the beet leafhopper, which interrupts the lifecycle, ruining a nightshade plant as a crop. As the name implies, it has the symptom of making the top leaves of the plant wrinkle up and grow abnormally. Some common tomato pests are cutworms, tomato hornworms and tobacco hornworms, aphids, cabbage loopers, whiteflies, tomato fruitworms, flea beetles, red spider mite, slugs, and Colorado potato beetles. Pollination. In the wild, original state, tomatoes required cross-pollination; they were much more self-incompatible than domestic cultivars. As a floral device to reduce selfing, the pistils of wild tomatoes extended farther out of the flower than today's cultivars. The stamens were, and remain, entirely within the closed corolla. As tomatoes were moved from their native areas, their traditional pollinators, (probably a species of halictid bee) did not move with them. The trait of self-fertility (or self-pollenizing) became an advantage and domestic cultivars of tomato have been selected to maximize this trait. This is not the same as self-pollination, despite the common claim that tomatoes do so. That tomatoes pollinate themselves poorly without outside aid is clearly shown in greenhouse situations where pollination must be aided by artificial wind, vibration of the plants (one brand of vibrator is a wand called an "electric bee" that is used manually), or more often today, by cultured bumblebees. The anther of a tomato flower is shaped like a hollow tube, with the pollen produced within the structure rather than on the surface, as with most species. The pollen moves through pores in the anther, but very little pollen is shed without some kind of outside motion. The best source of outside motion is a sonicating bee such as a bumblebee or the original wild halictid pollinator. In an outside setting, wind or biological agents provide sufficient motion to produce commercially viable crops. Hydroponic and greenhouse cultivation. Tomatoes are often grown in greenhouses in cooler climates, and indeed there are cultivars such as the British 'Moneymaker' and a number of cultivars grown in Siberia that are specifically bred for indoor growing. In more temperate climates, it is not uncommon to start seeds in greenhouses during the late winter for future transplant. With the transplanting of tomatoes, there is a process of hardening that the plant must go through before being able to be placed outside in order to have greater survival. Hydroponic tomatoes are also available, and the technique is often used in hostile growing environments as well as high-density plantings. Picking and ripening. Tomatoes are often picked unripe (and thus colored green) and ripened in storage with ethylene. Unripe tomatoes are firm, as they ripen they soften until reaching the ripe state where they are red or orange in color and slightly soft to the touch. Ethylene is a hydrocarbon gas produced by many fruits that acts as the molecular cue to begin the ripening process. Tomatoes ripened in this way tend to keep longer but have poorer flavor and a mealier, starchier texture than tomatoes ripened on the plant. They may be recognized by their color, which is more pink or orange than the other ripe tomatoes' deep red. In 1994 Calgene introduced a genetically modified tomato called the 'FlavrSavr' which could be vine ripened without compromising shelf life. However, the product was not commercially successful (see main article for details) and was only sold until 1997. Recently, stores have begun selling "tomatoes on the vine", which are determinate varieties that are ripened or harvested with the fruits still connected to a piece of vine. These tend to have more flavor than artificially ripened tomatoes (at a price premium), but still may not be the equal of local garden produce. Slow-ripening cultivars of tomato have been developed by crossing a non-ripening cultivar with ordinary tomato cultivars. Cultivars were selected whose fruits have a long shelf life and at least reasonable flavor. Modern uses and nutrition. Tomatoes are now eaten freely throughout the world, and their consumption is believed to benefit the heart among other things. They contain lycopene, one of the most powerful natural antioxidants, which, especially when tomatoes are cooked, has been found to help prevent prostate cancer. However, other research contradicts this claim. Tomato extract branded as Lycomato is now also being promoted for treatment of high blood pressure. Lycopene has also been shown to improve the skin's ability to protect against harmful UV rays. Natural genetic variation in tomatoes and their wild relatives has given a genetic treasure trove of genes that produce lycopene, carotene, anthocyanin, and other antioxidants. Tomato varieties are available with double the normal vitamin C (Doublerich), 40 times normal vitamin A (97L97), high levels of anthocyanin (P20 Blue), and two to four times the normal amount of lycopene (numerous available cultivars with the high crimson gene). Though it is botanically a berry, a subset of fruit, the tomato is nutritionally categorized as a vegetable (see below). Since "vegetable" is not a botanical term, there is no contradiction in a plant part being a fruit botanically while still being considered a vegetable. Tomatoes are used extensively in Mediterranean cuisine, especially Italian and Middle Eastern cuisines. The tomato is acidic; this acidity makes tomatoes especially easy to preserve in home canning whole, in pieces, as tomato sauce, or paste. Tomato juice is often canned and sold as a beverage; Unripe green tomatoes can also be breaded and fried, used to make salsa, or pickled. Cultural impact===. The town of Buñol, Spain, annually celebrates La Tomatina, a festival centered on an enormous tomato fight. Tomatoes are also a popular "non-lethal" throwing weapon in mass protests; and there was a common tradition of throwing rotten tomatoes at bad performers on a stage during the 19th century; today it is usually referenced as a mere metaphor (see Rotten Tomatoes). Embracing it for this protest connotation, the Dutch Socialist party adopted the tomato as their logo. Known for its tomato growth and production, the Mexican state of Sinaloa takes the tomato as its symbol. Storage. Most tomatoes today are picked before fully ripened. They are bred to continue ripening, but the enzyme that ripens tomatoes stops working when it reaches temperatures below 12.5°C (54.5°F). Once an unripe tomato drops below that temperature, it will not continue to ripen. Once fully ripe, tomatoes can be stored in the refrigerator but are best kept a room temperature. Tomatoes stored in the refrigerator tend to lose flavor, but will still be edible; thus the "Never Refrigerate" stickers sometimes placed on tomatoes in supermarkets. Botanical description. Tomato plants are vines, initially, typically growing six feet or more above the ground if supported, although erect bush varieties have been bred, generally three feet tall or shorter. Indeterminate types are "tender" perennials, dying annually in temperate climates (they are originally native to tropical highlands), although they can live up to three years in a greenhouse in some cases. Determinate types are annual in all climates. Tomato plants are dicots, and grow as a series of branching stems, with a terminal bud at the tip that does the actual growing. When that tip eventually stops growing, whether because of pruning or flowering, lateral buds take over and grow into other, fully functional, vines. Tomato plant vines are typically pubescent, meaning covered with fine short hairs. These hairs facilitate the vining process, turning into roots wherever the plant is in contact with the ground and moisture, especially if there is some issue with the vine's contact to its original root. Most tomato plants have compound leaves, and are called regular leaf (RL) plants. But some cultivars have simple leaves known as potato leaf (PL) style because of their resemblance to that close cousin. Of regular leaves, there are variations, such as rugose leaves, which are deeply grooved, variegated, angora leaves, which have additional colors where a genetic mutation causes chlorophyll to be excluded from some portions of the leaves. Their flowers, appearing on the apical meristem, have the anthers fused along the edges, forming a column surrounded by the pistil's style. Flowers tend to be self-fertilizing. This is because they are native to the Americas, where there were no honeybees (which are native to the old world). Similarly, many plants of the Americas are self-fertilizing, while others are pollinated by flies, butterflies, moths, other insects, or other external forces that present in the Americas, that made it possible for some new world plants to originally require biotic pollination. Tomato fruit is classified as a berry. As a true fruit, it develops from the ovary of the plant after fertilization, its flesh comprising the pericarp walls. The fruit contains hollow spaces full of seeds and moisture, called locular cavities. These vary, among cultivated species, according to type. Some smaller varieties have two cavities, globe-shaped varieties typically have three to five, beefsteak tomatoes have a great number of smaller cavities, while paste tomatoes have very few, very small cavities. The seeds need to come from a mature fruit, and be dried fermented before germination. Botanical classification. In 1753 the tomato was placed in the genus "Solanum" by Linnaeus as "Solanum lycopersicum" L. (derivation, 'lyco', wolf, plus 'persicum', peach, "i.e.," "wolf-peach"). However, in 1768 Philip Miller placed it in its own genus, and he named it "Lycopersicon esculentum". This name came into wide use but was in breach of the plant naming rules. Technically, the combination "Lycopersicon lycopersicum" (L.) H.Karst. would be more correct, but this name (published in 1881) has hardly ever been used (except in seed catalogs, which frequently used it and still do). Therefore, it was decided to conserve the well-known "Lycopersicon esculentum", making this the correct name for the tomato when it is placed in the genus "Lycopersicon". However, genetic evidence ("e.g.," Peralta & Spooner 2001) has now shown that Linnaeus was correct in the placement of the tomato in the genus "Solanum", making the Linnaean name correct; if "Lycopersicon" is excluded from "Solanum", "Solanum" is left as a paraphyletic taxon. Despite this, it is likely that the exact taxonomic placement of the tomato will be controversial for some time to come, with both names found in the literature. Two of the major reasons that some still consider the genera separate are the leaf structure (tomato leaves are markedly different from any other "Solanum"), and the biochemistry (many of the alkaloids common to other "Solanum" species are conspicuously absent in the tomato). The tomato can with some difficulty be crossed with a few species of diploid Potato with viable offspring that are capable of reproducing. Such hybrids provide conclusive evidence of the close relationship between these genera. The Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research began sequencing the tomato genome in 2004 and is creating a database of genomic sequences and information on the tomato and related plants. A draft version of the full genome expected to be published by 2008. The genomes of its organelles (mitochondria and chloroplast) are also expected to be published as part of the project. Fruit or vegetable? Botanically, a tomato is the ovary, together with its seeds, of a flowering plant: therefore it is a fruit or, more precisely, a berry. However, the tomato is not as sweet as those foodstuffs usually called fruits and, from a culinary standpoint, it is typically served as part of a salad or main course of a meal, as are vegetables, rather than at dessert in the case of most fruits. As noted above, the term vegetable has no botanical meaning and is purely a culinary term. This argument has had legal implications in the United States. In 1887, U.S. tariff laws that imposed a duty on vegetables but not on fruits caused the tomato's status to become a matter of legal importance. The U.S. Supreme Court settled the controversy on May 10, 1893 by declaring that the tomato is a vegetable, based on the popular definition that classifies vegetables by use, that they are generally served with dinner and not dessert ("Nix v. Hedden" (149 U.S. 304)). The holding of the case applies only to the interpretation of the Tariff Act of March 3, 1883, and the court did not purport to reclassify the tomato for botanical or other purposes other than for paying a tax under a tariff act. Tomatoes have been designated the state vegetable of New Jersey. Arkansas took both sides by declaring the "South Arkansas Vine Ripe Pink Tomato" to be both the state fruit and the state vegetable in the same law, citing both its culinary and botanical classifications. In 2006, the Ohio House of Representatives passed a law that would have declared the tomato to be the official state fruit, but the bill died when the Ohio Senate failed to act on it. Tomato juice has been the official beverage of Ohio since 1965. A.W. Livingston, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, played a large part in popularizing the tomato in the late 1800s. Due to the scientific definition of a fruit, the tomato remains a fruit when not dealing with US tariffs. Nor is it the only culinary vegetable that is a botanical fruit: eggplants, cucumbers, and squashes of all kinds (such as zucchini and pumpkins) share the same ambiguity. Pronunciation. The pronunciation of "tomato" differs in different English-speaking countries; the two most common variants are and. Speakers from the British Isles, most of the Commonwealth, and older generations among speakers of Southern American English typically say, while most American and Canadian speakers usually say. Many languages have a word that corresponds more to the former pronunciation, including the original Nahuatl word "tomato" from which they are all taken. The word's dual pronunciations were immortalized in Ira and George Gershwin's 1937 song "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off" ("You like and I like /You like and I like") and have become a symbol for nitpicking pronunciation disputes. In this capacity it has even become an American and British slang term: saying when presented with two choices can mean "What's the difference?" or "It's all the same to me." Safety. On October 30, 2006, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that tomatoes might have been the source of a salmonella outbreak causing 172 illnesses in 18 states. The affected states included Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont and Wisconsin. Tomatoes have been linked to seven salmonella outbreaks since 1990 (from the Food Safety Network). A 2008 salmonella outbreak caused the removal of tomatoes from stores and restaurants across the United States and parts of Canada. As of July 8, 2008, from April 10, 2008, the rare Saintpaul serotype of "Salmonella enterica" caused at least 1017 cases of salmonellosis food poisoning in 41 states throughout the United States, the District of Columbia, and Canada. As of July 2008, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration suspected that the contaminated food product was a common ingredient in fresh salsa, such as raw tomato, fresh jalapeño pepper, fresh serrano pepper, and fresh cilantro. It is the largest reported salmonellosis outbreak in the United States since 1985. New Mexico and Texas were proportionally the hardest hit by far, with 49.7 and 16.1 reported cases per million, respectively. The greatest number of reported cases occurred in Texas (384 reported cases), New Mexico (98), Illinois (100), and Arizona (49). There were at least 203 reported hospitalizations linked to the outbreak, it caused at least one death, and it may have been a contributing factor in at least one additional death. The CDC maintains that "it is likely many more illnesses have occurred than those reported." Applying a previous CDC estimated ratio of non-reported salmonellosis cases to reported cases (38.6:1), one would arrive at an estimated 40,273 illnesses from this outbreak. Tomato records. The heaviest tomato ever was one of 3.51 kg (7 lb 12 oz), of the cultivar 'Delicious', grown by Gordon Graham of Edmond, Oklahoma in 1986. The largest tomato plant grown was of the cultivar 'Sungold' and reached 19.8 m (65 ft) length, grown by Nutriculture Ltd (UK) of Mawdesley, Lancashire, UK, in 2000. The massive "tomato tree" growing inside the Walt Disney World Resort's experimental greenhouses in Lake Buena Vista, Florida may be the largest single tomato plant in the world. The plant has been recognized as a Guinness World Record Holder, with a harvest of more than 32,000 tomatoes and a total weight of 1,151.84 pounds (522 kg). It yields thousands of tomatoes at one time from a single vine. Yong Huang, Epcot's manager of agricultural science discovered the unique plant in Beijing, China. Huang brought its seeds to Epcot and created the specialized greenhouse for the fruit to grow. The vine grows golf ball-sized tomatoes which are served at Walt Disney World restaurants. The world record-setting tomato tree can be seen by guests along the Living With the Land boat ride at Epcot. On August 30, 2007, 40,000 Spaniards gathered in Buñol to throw of tomatoes at each other in the yearly Tomatina festival. Bare-chested tourists also included hundreds of British, French and Germans. Types. Varieties commonly grown by home gardeners include: Many varieties of processing tomatoes are grown commercially, but just five hybrid cultivars grown in California constitute over 60% of total production of processing tomatoes. Heritage and heirloom varieties with exceptional taste include: |