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Tomato plants are known to grow adventitious roots. I experienced it myself when a forgotten stem lied on the soil for a while.

Now I am curious if there are methods to cultivate such roots, other than that ? That is, to make roots grow at an arbitrary location on the stem ?

I was thinking of tricks like a bag of water or soil, but it doesn't seem very convenient.

Skippy le Grand Gourou
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Yes, there are propagation methods you can use which are similar, and they come under the general heading of layering. At its simplest, you can take a stem of a plant that's fairly near to soil level, peg it down into the soil and leave it in place, but still attached to the main plant; over time, roots will form where the stem is buried, and once it has developed a good root system, the new plantlet can be severed from the mother, or original plant. This sometimes happens quite naturally without human interference, but there are other ways of layering involving more human interference which are explained very well in this reference https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/plant-propagation-by-layering-instructions-for-the-home-gardener

Bamboo
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  • An easy shrub to practice this on is Forsythia - it roots readily along any stem that's firmly touching the ground. In 1987, I planted a Meadowlark forsythia at my first house. It layered by itself, so I took the baby with me when we moved. Four houses and 30+ years later, I'm growing two forsythias that are from that original shrub. I've also air layered a daylily, but that had what is technically called a proliferation along the flower scape which already had rootlets. – Jurp Oct 10 '18 at 00:49
  • I was more interested in air layering, a.k.a. marcotting, but your wording and your link inded provided me all I needed to get started and investigate on my own so I'll accept this answer. – Skippy le Grand Gourou Oct 10 '18 at 17:53