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 kind of tomato believed to be of southeast Asian origin, shaped similarly to the oval plum tomatoes but having the small size and some of the sweetness of

tomato The tomato (, ), ''Solanum lycopersicum'', is a plant whose fruit is an edible Berry (botany), berry that is eaten as a vegetable. The tomato is a member of the nightshade family that includes tobacco, potato, and chili peppers. It originate ...

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. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

'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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