Cultivar · Tomato cultivar
Micro-Tom
Micro-Tom is a miniature dwarf tomato released by the University of Florida in 1989 as an ornamental type, later adopted worldwide as a compact model system for tomato research.
Record
Cultivar / variety- Variety of
- Tomato
- Botanical taxon
- Solanum lycopersicum
- Type
- Miniature dwarf cultivar (widely used as a model line)
- Breeding method
- Bred cultivar (selection combining dwarfing mutations)
- Origin
- United States
- Released
- 1989
- Breeder / institution
- University of Florida (Agricultural Experiment Station)
- Registry status
- Historical
- Registries
- USDA GRIN — National Plant Germplasm System · United States · as of 2026-07-12Cited at the collection level for tomato germplasm and cultivar nomenclature; no specific accession identifier is asserted.
- Adaptation
- A very small dwarf plant well suited to growth chambers, greenhouses, and containers; it is grown in controlled conditions far more than in the open field.
- Intended use
- Research model system, Originally released as a miniature ornamental / container tomato
Registry listing or variety protection is jurisdiction- and date-specific and does not by itself indicate current commercial availability, universal cultivation approval, patent status, or a recommendation.
Micro-Tom is a miniature dwarf tomato originally released by the University of Florida in 1989 as a small ornamental and container plant. Its very compact size and short life cycle later made it a widely used model system for tomato genetics, physiology, and molecular biology.
The plant’s small stature comes from combining dwarfing mutations, which allow many individuals to be grown in a small space under controlled conditions. This practicality, rather than any commercial fruit value, is why Micro-Tom is so widely cultivated in research settings.
Identity and type
Micro-Tom is characterized by an extremely compact, determinate dwarf habit and a short generation time. These features let researchers raise large numbers of plants in growth chambers and small greenhouse areas, which is central to its role as a laboratory model.
- Parent crop
- Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)
- Growth habit
- Determinate dwarf (miniature)
- Origin
- University of Florida, released 1989
- Primary use
- Research model system; originally ornamental
Use as a model system
Because of its size, speed, and amenability to transformation, Micro-Tom has been adopted internationally as a reference background for tomato research, including studies of fruit development, hormones, and gene function. Many mutant and transgenic lines have been produced in this background.
Official variety registration
Entries recorded for this denomination in official variety registers. Registration is a legal fact about marketing or ownership, separate from where the variety is grown or whether seed is available.
No entry for this cultivar is currently listed in the registers AgricultureID reads.
Entries that are no longer current
Each register decides separately, so these are grouped by instrument and jurisdiction and never combined into one timeline.
United StatesCertificate of plant variety protection
- Observed 2026-08-27Certificate Expireddate not published by the sourceGranted 1992-01-31. The United States Plant Variety Protection now records this entry as “Certificate Expired” and publishes no date for the change.
- These registers publish a grant or listing date but no date for an entry ceasing to be current, so when this ended is not established here.
History records what an official source published at a point in time. Where the source states the date a change took effect, that date is shown; where it does not, only the date AgricultureID observed the change is shown, and it is labelled as such.
A variety registration permits marketing; a plant variety protection right is ownership. They are granted by different bodies under different law and are never added together.
Entries are matched to this cultivar by identical denomination and by matching botanical species. Registers do not publish a global variety identifier, so a same-name entry in the same species could in principle be a distinct variety.
Registration is jurisdiction-specific, is granted under a particular legal instrument, and changes. A variety absent from a register may still be grown; confirm the current position with the responsible authority before acting on it. How registration is recorded.
Relationships
Evidence-backed connections in the knowledge graph.
Related topics
Scope & limitations
Geographic scope: Originating at the University of Florida and now used in research laboratories worldwide; it is a controlled-environment plant rather than a field crop.
Climate context: Grown chiefly under controlled conditions in growth chambers and greenhouses because of its dwarf habit and short cycle.
- Micro-Tom is a research and ornamental line, so its compact traits do not reflect the behaviour of commercial field or greenhouse tomatoes.
- Its dwarf phenotype results from specific mutations, meaning physiological findings in this background are not always directly transferable to standard cultivars.
- It is distributed mainly through research germplasm channels, and precise seed sources can differ between laboratories.
Sources
This article draws on the following authoritative sources. See our sources & methodology for how they are selected.
- [1]GRIN-Global / National Plant Germplasm System (opens in a new tab)Authoritative
USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
Cited for: Tomato germplasm and cultivar nomenclature (collection level)
- Type:
- Official registry
- Jurisdiction:
- United States / Global
- Accessed:
- 2026-07-12
- High
Cited for: Species classification for Solanum lycopersicum
- Type:
- Reference database
- Jurisdiction:
- Global
- Accessed:
- 2026-07-12