Ill advised grafting projects

Many thanks to Dr. Brew for alerting us to this Simpsons routine about crossing tomatoes with tobacco. I took a look at the research on grafting tomatoes to tobacco root stock (though it seems Homer crossed the seeds) and the technique shows some promise. According to this study,

Tobacco grafting had a positive effect on the tomato plant cultivation performance; the onset of flowering was almost 15 days earlier and the tomato flower and fruit yields increased in both tomato cultivars. Tobacco grafting resulted in 5.0% and 30.1% increase in total fruit weight for cv. Sweet and cv. Elazig, respectively. Because the level of nicotine was within acceptable ranges, tobacco-grafted tomato fruits were considered to be safe for consumption. Self-grafted tomato cultivars also had flowering time onsets almost 11 days earlier. However, self-grafting caused 6.0% and 7.6% less total fruit yield per cv.

It does remind me of the unsuccessful attempt back in the 1970s to graft hops onto cannabis root stock with the goal of creating a legal looking plant containing THC. The grafts take but the “Hopijuana” plants contain no THC. No doubt this is a huge disappointment to the microbreweries of Colorado.

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4 Comments

  1. Eric, you have upgraded my education a bit! It did take me 6 years to get my BS in Landscape Architecture but I’m no Dr!(=

    Actually in Colorado the microbreweries can freely use Hop’s cousin Cannibus without any grafting required, it’s legal! Hard to believe!

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