Can anyone explain what is happening when a tomato has seeds inside that have sprouted before the tomato is even cut open?
Was it home grown or a bought one? May be it was given the long life treatment if a commercial one. and it did not rot to release the seeds so they started to grow any way Liz
Whenever I find a fruit or vegetable trying so hard to continue It's gene pool I plant it. I ended up with some great cultivars that way.
As you can see by the photo this tomato was store bought and it is not over ripe or rotting. I'm just wondering what the "long life treatment" is and how will that treatment affect my life expectancy.
I've had this happen before too and wondered why... because, tomato seeds have a germination inhibitor around them, and they shouldn't ever sprout inside the fruit unless it's gone off... but the ones I've had like that were not off or bad, just had these weird seedlings inside. I've planted a few of the seedlings and they've grown like crazy. Will be interesting to see what the fruit looks like when they come.
These are modern day tomatoes, designed for a generation of people who just can't wait for seeds to germinate! It's odd indeed.
The term for the phenomenon is [GOOGLE]precocious germination[/GOOGLE], and as Meighan points out, there are inhibitors: A Role for the Surrounding Fruit Tissues in Preventing the Germination of Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) Seeds - A Consideration of the Osmotic Environment and Abscisic Acid Also see Water relations of GA- and ABA-deficient tomato mutants during seed and fruit development and their influence on germination (PDF - might be academic / subscriber access only)
And by way of simple explanation as to what's happening - the plant hormones in these tomatoes are off-kilter.
Probably an unwanted by-product of artificial selection, like disease susceptibility in modern roses.
Quoting from Bewley, JD. 1997. Seed Germination and Dormancy. The Plant Cell, Vol. 9, 1055-1066. (PDF) So, to correct myself, it could be the environment surrounding the seed, the seed or both with the ABA strangeness. From what I understand from reading that article, the most likely culprit is a mutation in the seeds.