a hybrid of cucumber and tomato was grown in his dacha by a Minusinsk resident / Society news of Krasnoyarsk and the Krasnoyarsk Territory / Newslab.Ru

Minusinsk resident Ivan Syromyatnikov grew an unusual vegetable at his summer cottage – a hybrid of cucumber and tomato. As the amateur breeder stated, this is the world's first successful result of crossing such species.

According to the Minusinsk resident, he spent about 5 years experimenting with growing the hybrid. At the same time, the man himself does not have a specialized education: the gardener independently studied the works of Soviet agricultureacademician Nikolai Vavilov, American botanist George Carver, and also got acquainted with modern research on the Internet.

“Minusinsk, as everyone knows, is the tomato capital of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. I was born and raised here, and, of course, I grew tomatoes and cucumbers in my dacha,” recalls Ivan Syromyatnikov. – I started with popular varieties, then proprietary ones, and achieved good results – my own tomato variety “Dubensky” even participated in our annual famous competition, but, unfortunately, did not take first place. Then I thought: why choose just one!”

Ivan Syromyatnikov called the fruit of his labors orange. He is sure that such an unusual vegetable has every chance to “shoot” in the market, because lately in Russia, cucumbers and especially tomatoes have risen sharply in price. But a hybrid will be much more affordable, because instead of one vegetable, the buyer or gardener gets two at once, both different and equally tasty.

“Just imagine: you buy one large orange (on average, a mature hybrid weighs half a kilo) and you have two vegetables in your salad at once! Moreover, the taste does not suffer – you taste both tomato and cucumber at the same time! Add to this high yield (4-5 fruits can be collected from a bush), cold resistance, and resistance to pests. Well, the orange has an unusual appearance: on the outside it looks like a zucchini, but if you look at the cut, it’s as if a tomato is growing inside a cucumber,” says the author of the hybrid.

So far, the man offers to try orange only to his friends and acquaintances, but he is already negotiating with farm supply stores to sell the still small harvest, as well as with greenhouse farms to grow the vegetable on an industrial scale. According to preliminary estimates, the cost of the unusual hybrid will be about 250 rubles per kilogram, which is about 1.5-2 times cheaper than the average price for ordinary tomatoes or cucumbers in Krasnoyarsk stores.