Chips and tomato sauce from the same plant

UK horticultural firm Thompson & Morgan has developed the TomTato - a plant that produces both tomatoes and potatoes.

The plant is created by grafting a tomato seedling onto the emerging shoot from a potato tuber. The grafting is effective because potato and tomato belong to the same plant family: Solonaceae.

The hand-grafted TomTato plant reportedly produces more than 500 cherry tomatoes with a Brix level of 10.2 above the ground, while below ground, the plant produces white potatoes suitable for boiling, mashing, roasting or chipping. When planted, the TomTato looks like a normal tomato plant.

The company says the concept has been around for more than 15 years, but this is the first commercial production of such a plant.

“In the past we’ve never had any faith in the plants - they’ve not been very good - but grafting has come on in leaps and bounds in recent years,” Guy Barter of the Royal Horticultural Society told BBC News.

“It has been very difficult to achieve because the tomato stem and the potato stem have to be the same thickness for the graft to work,” Paul Hansord, Thompson & Morgan director, told the BBC.

“It is a very highly skilled operation. We have seen similar products. However, on closer inspection, the potato is planted in a pot with a tomato planted in the same pot - our plant is one plant and produces no potato foliage.”

The plant has been tested for alpha-solanine, the company says, and has been certified as safe. No genetic modification is involved, Thompson & Morgan says.

A similar product, the DoubleUP Potato Tom, was also released in New Zealand.