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rainbowgardener
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Re: Tomato/Pepper Hybrid. Is it possible?

@chefk the two leaves at the bottom are the cotyledons/ seed leaves. They are the first to appear when the seed sprouts and they do not look like the true leaves, which are all the other ones that appear forever after. Usually the seed leaves drop off after awhile. Yours will eventually too.

@batman. It is not a tomato pepper hybrid. It is a tomato. It is not the cherry tomato you thought you were planting. There can be various explanations for this. If it was a seed you saved, the cherry tomato might have crossed with some other tomato. If it was a commercial seed, sometimes other seeds sneak into a packet. Or it is a seed that was in the soil some other way. Everywhere I put my compost down, I get dozens of tomato seedlings sprouting from seeds that survived the composting process.

The definition of what makes two similar things different species is that they are different enough that they cannot crossbreed. Tomatoes and peppers are both in the nightshade family, but they are different species and cannot (without laboratory help) cross breed.

pepperhead212
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Actually, peppers of different species can cross, and even species that we previously thought could not cross with others, have been crossed, though often the plants produced are sterile. Here is a link showing these crosses: https://www.superhotchilli.com/info2.html

Tomatoes and peppers are each in a different genus. I haven't heard of crossing in different generi, but no telling what they are trying with GMO!

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rainbowgardener
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Well, different species can be made to cross with each other, but will not do it naturally.

Where I said "The definition of what makes two similar things different species is that they are different enough that they cannot crossbreed," I really should have said that they will not usually cross breed in nature.

Different genera can be made to cross only with GMO gene splicing techniques, which can create all kinds of chimera which would never be found in nature.

Image

This is a geep, a chimera of a goat and a sheep.

PaulF
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Gene splicing can be done in a lab but not in a garden. If the cherry tomato was an hybrid, no telling what the next generation will look like. but it will not become a pepper/tomato cross...unless you have a trained scientist and a very expensive set of biologic equipment on your property.

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rainbowgardener
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Yup, that was my point, exactly!



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