Cherry tomato on left grape tomatoes on right

Grape tomatoes on the vine at Ljubljana Central Market

Mid-City_Farmers_Market_-_5_June_2008_-_Grape_Tomatoes_Bell_Peppers

A grape tomato is a class of tomatoes believed to be of southeast Asian origin, shaped similarly to the oval

plum tomato A plum tomato, also known as a processing tomato or paste tomato, is a type of tomato bred for sauce and packing purposes. It is generally oval or cylindrical in shape, with significantly fewer locules (seed compartments, usually only two) than ...

es but having the small size and sweetness of

cherry tomato The cherry tomato is a type of small round tomato believed to be an intermediate genetic admixture between wild currant-type tomatoes and domesticated garden tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes range in size from a thumbtip up to the size of a golf bal ...

es. Grape tomatoes produce small and typically oblong fruits. Introduced to the worldwide market in the 1990s, they have gained substantial popularity, due at least in part to their higher sugar content compared to regular tomatoes, and due to their smaller, bite-sized shape. A commercially significant variety, the "Santa F1", was introduced into the United States market in 1997 by grower Andrew Chu, who obtained the seeds from

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

's Known-You Seed Company. Procacci Brothers Sales Corporation (PBSC) in Philadelphia acquired global exclusivity of this fruit and has aggressively marketed it under its subsidiary Santa Sweets, Inc. Grape tomato cluster partially ripened

The Santa F1 variety is rare in seed form, being offered only by a few seed houses around the world (the United Kingdom's Thompson & Morgan has sporadically featured the variety in its catalog from time to time); some gardeners report the seed can breed true out to six or more generations, an assertion that has received little notice from most gardening authorities. Other grape tomato cultivars, such as Rosalita, are more widely available to home gardeners.

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See also