Diospyros texana Diospyros texana Diospyros texana is a species of persimmon that is native to central, south and west Texas and southwest Oklahoma in the United States, and eastern Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas in northeastern Mexico. Common names include Texas persimmon, Mexican persimmon and the more ambiguous "black persimmon". It is known in Spanish as chapote, chapote manzano, or chapote prieto, all of which are derived from the Nahuatl word "tzapotl". That word also refers to several other fruit-bearing trees. "Diospyros texana" is a multi-trunked small tree or large shrub with a lifespan of 30 to 50 years. It usually
Genetically modified tomato cold and drought tolerance in transgenic "Arabidopsis thaliana" plants, was inserted into the tomato. This resulted in increased drought tolerance, but did not appear to have any effect on cold tolerance. Overexpressing a vacuolar Na/H antiport ("AtNHX1") from "A. thaliana" lead to salt accumulating in the leaves of the plants, but not in the fruit and allowed them to grow more in salt solutions than wildtype plants. They were the first salt-tolerant, edible plants ever created. Tobacco osmotic genes overexpressed in tomatoes produced plants that held a higher water content than wildtype plants increasing tolerance to drought and salt stress.