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Why Are Tomatoes Red? Blame Meteor

Dinosaur-killing impact forced the tomato into big changes, say scientists

By Dustin Lushing,  Newser Staff

Posted Jun 13, 2012 4:16 PM CDT | Updated Jun 16, 2012 1:20 PM CDT

(Newser) – Why are tomatoes red? The same reason dinosaurs were killed off, say scientists. The massive meteorite that struck Earth 60 to 70 million years ago created extremely harsh conditions that forced the evolution of the tomato into its current red and edible form, reports Phys.org. Researchers discovered this connection by mapping the complete tomato genome and finding that the number of tomato genes suddenly tripled near the time of the meteorite impact.

"Such a big genome expansion points to extremely stressful conditions," says one of the researchers. As the theory goes, the solar eclipse that followed the meteorite crash would have made it difficult for plants to live. "A distant ancestor of the tomato plant then reacted by expanding its genome considerably in order to increase its chances of survival." In time, the tomato shed some of the other characteristics it picked up, but its redness stayed.

Tomatoes turned red after a giant meteorite landed on Earth 60 to 70 million years ago.
Tomatoes turned red after a giant meteorite landed on Earth 60 to 70 million years ago.   (Shutterstock)
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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 26 comments
gzuckier
Jun 16, 2012 1:26 AM CDT
Well, when you get down to ti, they're red for the same reason ripe peppers, and  leaves in the fall, and all sort of other plant parts are red; or even purplish like some tomatoes and peppers and eggplants; because under the chlorophyll that colors them green, plants contain a lot of red pigments, which serve to increase the plants' efficiency by absorbing short wavelengths that chlorophyll doesn't, and reradiating the energy in wavelengths chlorophyll can use. Chlorophyll fades away for reasons I don't know when the leaf dies or the fruit stops producing it, and the red pigments are left. Fruit in general adopt bright colors to attract birds, which of course are dinosaurs which survived the big die-off, and see colors probably better than we do; I don't know if dinosaurs saw colors or ate fruit. Of course, from an evolutionary viewpoint, every parameter of a tomato or anything else is there to "increase the chance of survival"
ddhartma
Jun 13, 2012 8:49 PM CDT
In the early 1990's my daughter's high school biology class participated in a study of tomato seeds that had spent years on the Long-term Exposure satellite and found that the trays of seeds that received the greatest amount of exposure to the various gamma, X-rays, etc. grew a significantly larger percentage of albino tomatoes than those that were in trays less exposed (more towards the inside of the satellite).
RufusT.Firefly
Jun 13, 2012 7:43 PM CDT
All discoveries, even the ones that non-scientists dismiss as a waste of resources, add to the pool of human knowledge, where correlations can be made that explain other things, things that seemed completely unrelated at one point. Out of this, inventions are born and other things we thought we'd never see, things that change the world for the better.

 
evolution • genetics • plants • tomatoes • genes • genome • asteroid • meteorites • dinosaurs • tomato • fruit

 
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