Simpsons Fan Creates Real Tomacco Plant

An anonymous reader writes "So, according to a KPTV newscast, a Simpsons fan with too much time on his hands grafted a tobacco plant and a tomato plant and, ta-da: tomacco! Leaves and most likely the fruit (yes, tomato is a fruit technically) contain nicotine. Delicious AND deadly!" Simpsonschannel.com has a small news piece on the breakthrough, but in a Frink-like move, although scientists have found "nicotine in the leaves", it turns out "the lab hasn't tested if the actual tomato has nicotine in it yet, but they say it probably does."

Comments

What to do if your kids won't eat their vegetables

[qewl]

Start them early with Tomacco's! They'll start craving vegetables.. then just give them regular tomatoes. They'll have already made the connection that tomatoes make you feel better!

Also seems like a good way to try to quit smoking?

Wouldn't work with marijuana

[enosys]

This worked with tobacco because the nicotine is created in the roots and then transported to the rest of the plant. It wouldn't work with marijuana because the THC is produced in resin glands right where it's found (rather than transported there). The roots have no resin glands and practically no THC. (Read this)

In order to do something like this with marijuana you'd have to resort to genetic engineering.

Re:Nicotine not so bad

[DynaSoar]

marko123 sez: "Setting fire to tobacco leaves and breathing in the smoke gave Nicotine, an innocent bystander (in moderation), with potential for improving the brain's concentration levels, a bad name."

A bad name is right.

When the Taino people discovered and rescued that lost Italian guy, Columbus, he saw that they took these dried leaves, rolled them up into a tube, lit them on fire, and breathed in the smoke through their nose. When he asked them what they called that, they replied "tobago".

Tobago is Taino for "tube". It started with a misunderstanding, and that continues to this day.

The original residents of North America have always considered tobacco to be a medicinal plant, to the point of being considered sacred. Science is now finding that nicotine is beneficial to several disorders. Furthermore, there's something in tobacco (other than nicotine) that prevents Parkinson's in two-thirds to three-quarters of people who use it. And yes, that's adjusted for mortality/comorbidity.

As with anything, it's a matter of using it appropriately, or bad things happen.

Re:What the hell...

[benjamindees]

Try hops.

It was reported by Warmke and Davidson (1944) that hop scions grafted onto Cannabis stocks produced cannabinoid resins and this led to interest in the technique as a means of producing such material while avoiding legal restrictions.