Rice that looks and tastes like wheat? A plant that yields both tomatoes and potatoes? Strong Turkish tobacco that burns as smoothly as mild Virginia leaf? Such unlikely hybrids may now be a little closer to reality. Last week an Atomic Energy Commission researcher announced that he had achieved a long-elusive goal: the successful fusion of two different species of plant cells into a hybrid that has characteristics of both its "parents" and is capable of reproduction.
The experiment, directed by Biologist Peter Carlson at Long Island's Brookhaven National Laboratory, involved two species of wild tobacco called Nicotiana glauca and Nicotiana langsdorffii....
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