CNN posted a slouchy article on the process of genetically modifying groundcherries, a species of tomatillo, for commercial harvesting. I think the headline, Groundcherries, the latest modified fruit scientists want you to try, was designed to get a rise out of readers. Anything for a few hits on Facebook. If the header didn't grab your attention, the synopsis was even lamer: They taste like pineapple, but also like vanilla. They're "tropical" but also a bit like a tomato. A bit like a tomato? they're such close cousins, they're practically Irish twins.
I’d chalk the article up to uninformed journalism, replete with bad headlines, or bad tastebuds, or both. Of course, the CNN journalist Arman Azad might not have had anything to do with the epic headline fail. Could be a wonky editor. I can't answer for their tastebuds. Vanilla? Really?
Of course, most Facebook readers lost their collective minds. If the headline hadn’t read “modified” would all the howling Facebook readers have had such an adverse knee-jerk reaction? One could almost hear all those knees smacking their owners in the chin. Don't knock out all your teeth in the process.
Groundcherries (Physalis peruviana) are not some kind of new frankenfruit. Modified does not mean inter-species spliced GMOs, no foreign fish, or alien fungus genes inserted into your tomatoes or groundcherries. People have been domesticating tomatillo species for millennia. If anything, they should be dubbed heirloom plants—even though they're considered to be weeds the world over.
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| Cape gooseberries, or Inca berries, Physalis peruviana, take some time to ripen.—Wiki |
The CNN article nattered on about the significance of scientific development of a more compact groundcherry bush with larger fruit, and more fruit clusters. Talk about burying the lead sentence! If the CNN journalist had merely called the process “domestication” then there probably would have been no flappy Facebook furor. Talk about the five Ws of journalism gone awry. Never bury the lead.
The real problem is developing a commercially viable crop, so that Physalis peruviana can be harvested and shipped. It's just not commercially viable as is—wild grown. Harvesting, shipping, etc., is problematic, as the big rambling bush likes to flop about and lay down on the ground, and randomly drop its fruit—hence the name—groundcherries.
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| Cape gooseberries, Inca berries Physalis peruviana, yellow ones are the sweetest. |
As to gene manipulation, any food you eat has already been modified. Call it domestication, cultivation, or breeding—whether by natural selection, farmers, monks, or scientists... Everything we eat has been modified, unless it's completely wild.
Take teosinte, or maize from the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico, it was a tiny rock-hard grass seed. The native cultures of Mesoamerica developed it into a multi-grained maize husk about the size of a baby’s pinkie. It was still rock hard. Selective modification developed it into small hard ears of corn—capable of breaking teeth. But massive cultivation in the 16th c., and changing tastes, developed it into the sweet, tender juicy corn of today. But this process took centuries. Scientists can now tweak, or edit a plant’s own genes in a few generations in the lab.
And it's not just corn, bananas and apples—pretty much everything we eat has been manipulated. Have you ever seen a wild banana? It's all seeds and no banana pulp. Crabapples are bitter compact fruits with little flesh, and big seeds—ditto that with plums and peaches. Broccoli is a case of EXTREME plant modification on steroids. It doesn't even exist in the wild. A few tiny flower buds. I suspect cauliflower, which has been around since the 16th century, was also once a tiny posy.
Old school plant genetic manipulation was largely based on trial and error, and it took farmers and monks generations to isolate, and breed favorable genetic traits. Remember Gregor Mendel and his red and white flowering pea experiments? One red pea, and one white pea parent will equal a pink pea. Genetic manipulation is not a new concept. Well, in a lab, things are merely speeded up, genes can be tickled and tweaked to produce smaller shrubs, and more fruits. Pollen can be isolated, so there’s no outside interference, no stray genes in the family tree. And a commercially viable plant can be developed within a few years in the lab, vs. decades—or centuries—in the field.
And since most of the Facebook readers opined and shuddered over the twinned plant porn words like genetic mutation, and manipulation, without actually having read the article, I've pulled two quotes from the bottom of the article to keep us all on the same page:
Ground cherries (Physalis peruviana) too are a member of the nightshade family, hence the tomato reference. There are nearly a hundred species of Physalis, and to further confuse things, most species the world over, are called groundcherries, regardless of the actual species. That's what happens with common names. They get borrowed. With that many species to contend with, there's bound to be some variation in flavor. But, from the field reports, the taste of vanilla or pineapple don't seem to be among them. Dulcet sweet tomato, maybe. In fact, one reader said they tasted like stinky feet.
There’s Physalis missouriensis / P. virginiana (same species? sometimes erroneously referred to as black nightshade (S. nigrum), which is often toxic), Physalis philadelphica / Physalis ixocarpa —AKA tomatillos, native to Central America and Mexico, despite its Philadelphic neo-Latin name, is from Mexico, as it was cultivated in the pre-Columbian era. There are 46 species of Physalis native to Mexico alone. Wow. Some have made their way to Arizona, and have made serious inroads in Middle America, all the way up into Canada, and the Eastern Seaboard. I like to imagine, that along with the spread of teosinte, from Nahuatl teōcintli, teōtl god + cintli dried ears of maize (Zea mays), Psysalis too hitched a ride north.
All Physalis are native to Central, and South America. Since 90% of all Physalis species hail from Central and South America, and since only Physalis philadelphica (or Physalis ixocarpa) was exported during the 20th c., I suspect some of the global escapees might have been successful pre-Columbian hitchhikers to Micronesia and Australasia and beyond. When the wild solanum genomes are fully sequenced, we'll have a better picture of the migration range.
Tomatoes (Solanum) and chili peppers (from the Nahuatl, chīlli, Capsicum) both from the Solanaceae family, arrived from Central America to the Old World in two different directions: Spain via the Spanish conquistadors, and the Far East—to the Middle East—via the Portuguese navigators, thus causing massive confusion as to both parentage and edibility of the family of Solanaceae.
Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade, one of the most toxic plants from Eurasia—now naturalized the world over. In the Middle Ages women used belladonna to dilate their pupils.)
The English were content to grow various solanum as poisonous garden ornamentals for a few centuries, while the Italians and Iberians began experimenting with love apples and hot chilis (sweet peppers as well as the Physalis species), in foods. Imagine Italian cooking sans noodles and tomato sauce, or Hungary without its paprika. With the introduction of tomatoes and chilis Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian cuisine has never been the same. (Potatoes are another chapter in the story.)
But solanine poisoning—from green-skinned potatoes—is the glycoalkaloid to avoid. The green color is merely chlorophyll, but green skin indicates high levels of bitter-tasting solanine and chaconine. Most of the toxins are concentrated close to the skin's surface, so peel off all that green before you eat them. When I was trekking in the Andean altiplano, I ate local black potatoes (papas negras—there are over 4000 varieties of Andean potatoes) but they were bitter as gall, and my GI tract never forgave me. Apparently I was supposed to also eat the arcilla de chaco jacket—clay, ancestor of Kaopectate, absorbs the bitterness.
The anti-inflamatory agent found in tomatoes, Lycopene, comes from the tomato's former Latin name, Lycopersicon, or wolf peach... Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous for centuries.
Wiki tells us that:
Making Physalis peruviana a commercial crop will take some doing. The biggest hurdle is, not getting the bush to be more robust, but getting people to eat them. It took the British nearly three centuries to eat their tomatoes. I fear the CNN article will not pave the way to help develop a sustainable market.
Since lycopene is a hot item right now, despite its wolfish moniker, I suspect this will be the best publicity a goundcherry could have. It could be marketed as The Next New Thing, and an heirloom plant all in one. Whatta howl!
And it's not just corn, bananas and apples—pretty much everything we eat has been manipulated. Have you ever seen a wild banana? It's all seeds and no banana pulp. Crabapples are bitter compact fruits with little flesh, and big seeds—ditto that with plums and peaches. Broccoli is a case of EXTREME plant modification on steroids. It doesn't even exist in the wild. A few tiny flower buds. I suspect cauliflower, which has been around since the 16th century, was also once a tiny posy.
Old school plant genetic manipulation was largely based on trial and error, and it took farmers and monks generations to isolate, and breed favorable genetic traits. Remember Gregor Mendel and his red and white flowering pea experiments? One red pea, and one white pea parent will equal a pink pea. Genetic manipulation is not a new concept. Well, in a lab, things are merely speeded up, genes can be tickled and tweaked to produce smaller shrubs, and more fruits. Pollen can be isolated, so there’s no outside interference, no stray genes in the family tree. And a commercially viable plant can be developed within a few years in the lab, vs. decades—or centuries—in the field.
And since most of the Facebook readers opined and shuddered over the twinned plant porn words like genetic mutation, and manipulation, without actually having read the article, I've pulled two quotes from the bottom of the article to keep us all on the same page:
"When you mutate the gene, it basically shrinks the plant like an accordion so you can make it much more compact"said Zachary Lippman, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory...researchers were able to make plants that grew 50% more groundcherries on any given stem, and those fruits were larger—weighing up to 24% more than the traditional, unmodified versions.
Lippman also notes that humans have been eating genetically modified crops for millennia, selectively breeding those fruits and vegetables that had the most favorable traits. "We have been eating mutations in plants and animals since humans started to improve crops thousands of years ago," he said. "That's a random process and took thousands of years. With gene editing, you're now just making one mutation in one gene in the simplest sense."A lone voice of sanity and reason on the Facebook thread, UC Davis grad student, Randi Jiménez, a researcher, whose field of expertise is the nightshade family, explained it best (largely to a crowd of deaf ears, or, rather, blind eyes):
There are some 2000 species of solanum, including potatoes, tomatoes, and chiles. And there are many wild tomato species that we know nothing about, including S. peruvianum, S. cheesmanii, S. galapagense, S. chilense, and S. pimpinellifolium—and its offspring, that lone domesticated cultivar, that tasteless supermarket darling, S. lycopersicum (AKA Lycopersicon esculentum). And there are at least 90 species of the tomato-like cousin, Physalis, that are such successful hitchhikers, they are considered to be weeds the world over.For those upset about the modification, this isn't the GMO of the past that you might have in mind. Previously, genes from totally different species were inserted into a crop's genome, this technique of genetic editing, also sometimes called precision breeding, causes small mutations in the crop's own genes. In this case, scientists at Cornell induced mutations in ground cherry to make the ground cherry genes resemble tomato genes. (Tomatoes are related to ground cherries.) These mutations could and in many cases already occur naturally. This way, though, scientists can get all the preferred versions of the genes into one plant without several years of screening and breeding.
Ground cherries (Physalis peruviana) too are a member of the nightshade family, hence the tomato reference. There are nearly a hundred species of Physalis, and to further confuse things, most species the world over, are called groundcherries, regardless of the actual species. That's what happens with common names. They get borrowed. With that many species to contend with, there's bound to be some variation in flavor. But, from the field reports, the taste of vanilla or pineapple don't seem to be among them. Dulcet sweet tomato, maybe. In fact, one reader said they tasted like stinky feet.
There’s Physalis missouriensis / P. virginiana (same species? sometimes erroneously referred to as black nightshade (S. nigrum), which is often toxic), Physalis philadelphica / Physalis ixocarpa —AKA tomatillos, native to Central America and Mexico, despite its Philadelphic neo-Latin name, is from Mexico, as it was cultivated in the pre-Columbian era. There are 46 species of Physalis native to Mexico alone. Wow. Some have made their way to Arizona, and have made serious inroads in Middle America, all the way up into Canada, and the Eastern Seaboard. I like to imagine, that along with the spread of teosinte, from Nahuatl teōcintli, teōtl god + cintli dried ears of maize (Zea mays), Psysalis too hitched a ride north.
The wild tomatillo and related plants are found everywhere in the Americas except in the far north, with the highest diversity in Mexico. In 2017, scientists reported on their discovery and analysis of a fossil tomatillo found in the Patagonian region of Argentina, dated to 52 million years B.P. The finding has pushed back the earliest appearance of the Solanaceae plant family of which the tomatillos are one genus. Tomatillos were domesticated in Mexico before the coming of Europeans, and played an important part in the culture of the Maya and the Aztecs, more important than the tomato. The tomatillo (from Nahuatl, tomatl) is also known as... tomate de cáscara, tomate de fresadilla, tomate milpero, tomate verde (green tomato), miltomate, farolito, or simply tomate (in which case the tomato is called jitomate). The specific name philadelphica dates from the 18th century. In the United States, tomatillos have been cultivated since 1863. By the middle of the 20th century, the plant was exported to India, Australia, South Africa, and Kenya.—WikiPhysalis peruviana, Cape gooseberry, despite its South African moniker, is native to South America, specifically to the Peruvian Andes, where it is called the Inca berry, but it is now considered a common weed in many subtropical areas. I like to think of the paper lantern jacket enshrouding the unripe fruit as a little paper cape—thus bypassing the confusing South African reference.
All Physalis are native to Central, and South America. Since 90% of all Physalis species hail from Central and South America, and since only Physalis philadelphica (or Physalis ixocarpa) was exported during the 20th c., I suspect some of the global escapees might have been successful pre-Columbian hitchhikers to Micronesia and Australasia and beyond. When the wild solanum genomes are fully sequenced, we'll have a better picture of the migration range.
Tomatoes (Solanum) and chili peppers (from the Nahuatl, chīlli, Capsicum) both from the Solanaceae family, arrived from Central America to the Old World in two different directions: Spain via the Spanish conquistadors, and the Far East—to the Middle East—via the Portuguese navigators, thus causing massive confusion as to both parentage and edibility of the family of Solanaceae.
Solanum is a large and diverse genus of flowering plants, which include two food crops of high economic importance, the potato and the tomato. It also contains the nightshades and horse nettles, as well as numerous plants cultivated for their ornamental flowers and fruit. —WikiEuropean black nightshade (S. nigrum), introduced to the Americas, and Australasia, is considered toxic, but fully ripened fruit and foliage are cooked and eaten in many regions. But only if you know what you're doing. Otherwise, it's curtains—as black nightshade is highly variable—avoid eating the berries unless they are a known edible strain. With survivors present. (Nota bene: S. nigrum is not
Atropa belladonna, deadly nightshade, one of the most toxic plants from Eurasia—now naturalized the world over. In the Middle Ages women used belladonna to dilate their pupils.)
Some of the major species within the S. nigrum complex are: S. nigrum, S. americanum, S. douglasii, S. opacum, S. ptychanthum, S.retroflexum, S. sarrachoides, S. scabrum, and S. villosum.... Other species are significant food crops regionally, such as Ethiopian eggplant and gilo (S. aethiopicum), naranjilla or lulo (S. quitoense), turkey berry (S. torvum), pepino (S. muricatum), tamarillo, or "bush tomatoes" (several Australian species). —Wiki
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| Ripe berries of the "Red Makoi" variety of S. nigrum are edible. —Wiki |
The English were content to grow various solanum as poisonous garden ornamentals for a few centuries, while the Italians and Iberians began experimenting with love apples and hot chilis (sweet peppers as well as the Physalis species), in foods. Imagine Italian cooking sans noodles and tomato sauce, or Hungary without its paprika. With the introduction of tomatoes and chilis Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and South Asian cuisine has never been the same. (Potatoes are another chapter in the story.)
Tomatoes were brought to Europe in the 1590s. The English botanist John Gerard was one of the first cultivators of the tomato plant. In his publication Grete Herball, he considered tomatoes as poisonous due to their levels of what would later be called tomatine, plus high acid content. Consequently, tomatoes were generally not eaten in Britain until the mid-18th century. —WikiNot all Physalis species have edible fruit. The tricky bit is to make sure you’re not eating a more deadly species of solanum. Solanum nigrum fruit is so highly variable and diverse, it looks a lot like several Physalis sp. Keep in mind that in general, the entire plant of any nightshade, with the exception of some species, and strains of ripe fruit, is toxic, all unripe fruit of the nightshade family is toxic—except maybe for fried green tomatoes. Just don't pig out on them, or eat them raw, as the tomatine, a glycoalkaloid, or glycospirosolane, is more concentrated in unripe tomatoes.
But solanine poisoning—from green-skinned potatoes—is the glycoalkaloid to avoid. The green color is merely chlorophyll, but green skin indicates high levels of bitter-tasting solanine and chaconine. Most of the toxins are concentrated close to the skin's surface, so peel off all that green before you eat them. When I was trekking in the Andean altiplano, I ate local black potatoes (papas negras—there are over 4000 varieties of Andean potatoes) but they were bitter as gall, and my GI tract never forgave me. Apparently I was supposed to also eat the arcilla de chaco jacket—clay, ancestor of Kaopectate, absorbs the bitterness.
The anti-inflamatory agent found in tomatoes, Lycopene, comes from the tomato's former Latin name, Lycopersicon, or wolf peach... Europeans thought tomatoes were poisonous for centuries.
Wiki tells us that:
Lycopene (from the neo-Latin Lycopersicum, the tomato species) is a bright red carotene and carotenoid pigment and phytochemical found in tomatoes and other red fruits and vegetables, such as red carrots, watermelons, papayas.Lycopene is a powerful anti-inflammatory agent that helps protect the skin... it's reputed to have healthy heart benefits, reduce osteoporosis, reduce cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and is a powerful antioxidant useful in combating cancers including prostate cancer. (See goji, or wolfberry.)
Making Physalis peruviana a commercial crop will take some doing. The biggest hurdle is, not getting the bush to be more robust, but getting people to eat them. It took the British nearly three centuries to eat their tomatoes. I fear the CNN article will not pave the way to help develop a sustainable market.
Since lycopene is a hot item right now, despite its wolfish moniker, I suspect this will be the best publicity a goundcherry could have. It could be marketed as The Next New Thing, and an heirloom plant all in one. Whatta howl!
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| Howling wolf —Wiki |
In case you think this is the next New Thing, here's a Smithsonian article from 2010, Five Ways to Eat Ground Cherries:
Evolution of Crop Plants: The origins of agriculture and the domestication of plants
What tastes like a cherry tomato injected with mango and pineapple juice, and looks like an orange pearl encased in a miniature paper lantern?And another article from the LA Times, 2011, Growing the ground cherry, the tomato's sweet-tart cousin:
No, I’m not just trying to cram as many fruit references into one sentence as possible. It’s a real plant: Physalis pruinosa, aka the “ground cherry.”
I’d never heard of them until they showed up in our CSA share last week. Ground cherries are one of those slightly obscure seasonal things—like purple long beans or fresh lima beans—you’ll probably come across only by chance from a farmstand or a friend’s garden. If you do, consider yourself lucky!
These little gems are in the same genus as tomatillos (Physalis philadelphica)—hence the similar papery husk—and the same family as tomatoes. Ground cherries taste slightly sweet and tropical, with a texture that’s somewhere between a tomato and a grape. According to this article, their common name comes from the fact that the fruit falls to the ground when it is ripe. The guy at our local farmstand called them “ground tomatoes,” and a bit of online research turns up many other names: “husk cherries,” “winter cherries,” “strawberry tomatoes.” Some sources also call them Cape gooseberries, but from what I can tell, those are slightly different (Physalis peruviana).
At Wattles Farm, the community garden in Hollywood, Gina Thomas pointed out a cluster of tiny, husk-enclosed ground cherries hidden among the foliage. Some were no bigger than marbles.Notes on plant domestication:
"It comes from South America," she said, adding that one Wattles gardener from Poland makes pies out of the cherries. "They look like tomatillos but are sweet and tart at the same time—the crunchiness of a tomato with the sweetness of a cherry. The very yellow ones are the sweetest."
But be warned: The leaves and unripened fruit are toxic. Ground cherries (Physalis peruviana) are nightshade plants, after all.
Like tomatillo (Physalis philadelphica), ground cherries sprawl as they grow, sending out fruit enclosed within a protective papery husk, an enclosing cape. (Another common name for ground cherries is cape gooseberry, although it's not at all related to the better-known [ribes] gooseberry that grows on a shrub.)
Evolution of Crop Plants: The origins of agriculture and the domestication of plants
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