Quote:
Originally Posted by Tania
I am having trouble to locate any background information for Black Ethiopian tomato. I think I saw somewhere that it may be Ukrainian tomato, and this got me curious.
Any help is appreciated!
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The first entry I see in the SSE Yearbooks was in 1996 where an SSE member from MN listed it and said it was from the Ukraine and seeds were received in 1995.
Members of the former Soviet Union army occupied Ethiopia for many years and no doubt it was brought to Ethiopia by one of those persons, and it probably, or maybe, is a variety that we already know under a different name.
One of my former students, Tadesse Wuhib, claimed asylum in the US as did his uncle and a few other family members, and I met his uncle when Tadesse graduated from college. His uncle was the former Bishop of Ethiopia and returned to that position when the country was again free. Tadesse went on in his career to get an MS in Medical Administration, studied with a witch doctor in S America and then graduated from Johns Hopkins with an MD degree, eventually ended up managing a pediatric health program for the country of Armenia, after joining CDC where he then was one of the selected members to go to places having problems with newly recognized infectious diseases.
So I knew quite a bit about Ethiopia as regards the Soviet occupation from Tadesse, his uncle and his sister.
So Black Ethiopia really isn't a legend type variety of the kinds being discussed in this Forum, just another so called black, and those of you who know me know I say a so called black only b/c with few exceptions I'm not that fond of them and so many of them are so similar. When Craig and I joined SSE there were perhaps 2 listings for them, and then came the explosion, meaning the numbers increased very very fast. They became a fad.
It seems to me that where there is demand the varieties will appear, if you catch my drift, and the same thing has happened of late with the green-when ripes.
No, the above couple of paragraphs aren't answering the direct question Tania asked, I just threw that in here for general info re my opinion, well, not just my opinion on this subject.
And I am up at this ridiculous hour and trying to get sleepy again so I can go back to bed.
