I have created live Tomacco here in Lake Oswego. I grew tomato and tobacco from seed and grafted then together creating a tomato plant with tobacco roots. The leaves and fruit of the tomato top should have nicotine in them. I have moved the plant inside. Fruit is now 1.7 inches in diameter.

How I created Tomacco:
I grew the tomato and tobacco plants side by side and cut both stems open and wrapped them together. The two plants fused and then I cut off the tomato root leaving the tomato plant dependent on the tobacco root for water, nutrients and nicotine!

I do not plan on tasting Tomacco since the fatal dose of nicotine is only 50 to 60 milligrams [3].

I did an internet search and found no one else had grown Tomacco yet. This is yet another connection between Portland and the Simpsons.

The fruit is red now and I plan on getting it tested for nicotine. A local lab has offered to do the testing for free! I am going to try to schedule the testing done this Friday, October 24th.

Rob Baur
Lake Oswego, OR

Footnotes:
[1] http://www.thesimpsons.com/episode_guide/1105.htm
[2] Bio-Organic Chemistry 1968 pg. 170 ISBN 0-7167-0974-0
[3] http://www.chemsoc.org/exemplarchem/entries/2002/hook/nicotine.htm

Tomacco 1

A Simpsons fan, Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, inspired by the episode and remembering reading the article in a textbook, cultivated real Tomacco in 2003. Tests on the plant revealed nicotine in the leaves. He was featured on the “E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)” audio commentary in the Season 11 DVD box set discussing the plant and resulting fame and mentioned selling one plant on eBay for $16 and going on to make a potato/tomato hybrid, which the media gave no attention to.

The 2004 convention of the American Dialect Society named tomacco as the new word “least likely to succeed.”