Tomato
Solanum lycoperscicum
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an important vegetable crop. At present, about 160 million tonnes of fresh tomatoes are produced from 4.7 million ha (FAOSTAT, 2011).Tomatoes are native to South America, but were brought to Europe sometime in the 15th century, where they soon became popular and were exported around the world. For a long time tomatoes were known by the name Lycopersicon esculentum, but recent work has shown that they are part of the genus Solanum – as Linnaeus recognized when he first described the species.