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Post by GunnarSK on Jan 5, 2011 3:41:27 GMT -8
The gs (green stripes) gene in tomatoes was probably first introduced in Green Zebra a couple of decades ago. It is present in many WBF creations, and I think also in Black Zebra and Big Zebra. I'd like to know, where you have the gene from originally, and if it is also present in some of your newer creations, Tom.
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Post by Tom Wagner on Jan 7, 2011 23:51:48 GMT -8
I am a breeder of tomatoes and the diversity of genes that are in my creations have to come from somewhere. The gs gene is ubiquitous now, note the small caps which indicated recessive? Where did I get the first start for it?
If you have read this far, then just maybe you want to know.
It did not come from Tigerella...it did not come from the Tomato Genetics Resource Center at University of California, Davis, even though I have mentioned that it may have come from the Gulf State Market tomato, but my records of the actual plot number is buried in my archives of near 1,000 lbs of plot maps, breeding journals, and gathered literature.
I was breeding tomatoes for quite a few years before I made a trip to the Tomato Collections near Ames, Iowa. Years later they moved the collections to Geneva, NY, by the way. Anyway I met with the curator there and took a tour of the facility during the tomato season, marveled at the many jars of seed on shelves and walked the tomato fields where the accessions that were of short supply were being increased with a few as 6 to 10 plants. The curator told me that many of the lines were of mixed purity obviously, but they bulked the increased seed regardless, not knowing if they should be doing any selection or elimination. After an hour of looking at several hundred lines of tomatoes, the curator left me to my own wits to observe each and everyone of the accessions. My thoughts were: Boring! They all look much alike, but you could tell there was a lot of variety mix-up, accidental crossings, or whatever. I made selections of a single fruits of about a dozen types that caught my eye, or were just random picks. I made notes to the accession number or plot number.
Cutting to the chase, I sighted one vine that had red tomatoes with a slight yellow stripe. It was not dramatic in hindsight, but I was looking anything out of the ordinary so that I could use it in breeding.
Growing out the striped tomato the next season at the farm home, near Lancaster, KS, I made crosses with the tomato with just about every other variety or cross I had at the time. The cross to Red Cherry produced a large cherry tomato with a very faint stripe....I could see it better on the unripe fruits better than the ripe ones. Selfing that hybrid out produced the variety I called CHERRY STRIPE, but it never had really vivid stripes...no better than the first collection from Ames. But as I crossed and crossed, selfed and selfed, I was able to get an increase in the number of stripes from just a few to many, from faint to vivid. I don't know even to this day if I had a mutation or what that provided me with an enhanced gs.
If what I had was a translocation or a doubling of the gs gene with a re-attached arm that carried the gene.....I simply don't know. I was trying to answer my own questions during my study for a degree in Botany with graduate level classes in cytogenetics, but to no avail.
As I continued to breed with the better stripe types, the genesis of the trait was put into the clones of Banana Legs, Green Nails, Green Bell Pepper Tomato, Schimmeig Creg, Schimmeig Stoo, Brown Derby (Striped), Elberta Girl, and many more too numerous to mention. Oh, and Green Zebra.
WBF, Brad Gates's Wild Boar Farms, and Jeff Dawson have helped create dozens of accidental crosses that propelled the advance of striped tomato clones out of my Green Zebra. Brad will admit that Green Zebra not only provided the stripe but some of the complex flavors of his named cultivars.
Dawson had natural crosses of Green Zebra and Marvel Stripe to get the Black Zebra, Copia, and the Marv series.
John Swenson of the Historic Wagner Farm, (no relation) got ahold of one of lines back before my Tater Mater catalog and named it Banana Legs, and natural crosses of it to Antique Roman created the series of Striped Roman, Roman Holiday, Roman Candles, etc.
Had I continued with my releases in my Tater Mater Seeds catalog as I had done from 1983 through 1987, I would have had similar types such as Brad's, John's, and Jeff's work.
Many others have made selections out of mostly accidental crosses and more recently some purposeful crosses of Green Zebra and the other stripes. In so many ways I am happy that has happened. At different times in the past, I have thought that my work should be released with a bit more fanfare such as plant patents, royalties, working with the bigger seed companies, but that is another story. As I become more of a proponent of OPEN SOURCE sharing of seed, I must find other rationales for submitting varieties to the public
My version of the gs gene, if it is different somehow, has been worked on for most of the 60's, all of the 70's, 80's, 90's, 00's and now in the 10's.
I am compiling a list of many of my striped tomato varieties that have not been publicized as yet. It is taking me many nights to look through the thousands of clones that I have named or yet to name. Some are taking on fanciful names like Mukilteo Lighthouse, largely because of where I may have been when showing someone some of my newer creations.
Tom Wagner
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Post by wmontanez on Jan 8, 2011 9:20:04 GMT -8
Looking back to the history of Green Zebra, and so many other named varieties after that are now available to consumers around the world that makes the story of how you came to pick one that caugh your trained eye even more fantastic.
What I like about you is your disposition to share knowledge and supply small farm/growers plus hobbiest gardeners with some of your work. You are gaining good international presence and should think of getting revenue from your work so you can continue creating and distributing seeds that ensure biodiversity. I personally rather support your single man breeding operation than buying from other catalogs/vendors because I believe in what you stand for and echoes some of my beliefs. I am an organic regenerative gardener that beliefs in self-sufficiency and my role is to introduce and protect biodiversity by growing lots of different things possibly adapted to different climates etc. I can't just grow a big white potato or round red tomato anymore.
I do support some other open pollinated, heirloom and preservation individuals because I think big seed companies are becoming too greedy. I liked your comment about open source seeds, in times like this with GMO and patented seeds is so rebel.
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gs gene
Jan 12, 2011 2:18:12 GMT -8
Post by thefuture on Jan 12, 2011 2:18:12 GMT -8
ditto!
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gs gene
Jan 13, 2011 10:24:02 GMT -8
Post by kctomato on Jan 13, 2011 10:24:02 GMT -8
Being from Ames the likely source was Larsen or Pollock (@penn State) who noted it in the first edition of the Reports of the Tomato Genetics Cooperative ( TGC1:9): During the summer of 1948, a local gardener brought samples of an unusual fruit-striping mutation of a single plant occurring in his garden. Seed was saved and plants grown in 1949. All plants bred true for the characteristic. Unfortunately the variety from which this mutant was obtained is unknown but it is believed to have been derived from Gulf State Market.
'Tigerella' is listed in Tatiana's as predating that event (30's). One could speculate someone brought it back with them after the war and this gardener somehow getting seeds but this seems unlikely since apparently it came out in something unexpectedly and was recessive when it showed up (based on info of L&P finding it to be stable). By the mid 50's Stubbes had listed " gs" in a 'Rheinland's Ruhm' background and Rick was listed as a source for seed containing this gene as early as January of 1954 (so it could be that Rick was the Ames source). Though it's listed as recessive, the gene shows incomplete dominance. It has been fairly easy to spot heterozygotes in material. I find it easier to tell in the green stage especially when the background of the tomato is r/r and y/y. Green stripe, yellow fleshed tomatoes with yellow skin tend to mask the striping in mature fruits but it can still be observed in good light and a contrasting background as the stripe parts tend to be more gold in color. Similar to this: from TGRCphoto by D. Hallett
There may be some continuum of expression to the stripes - wider vs thin, location such as predominately on shoulders, amount of stripes, and angularity of ends (pointed vs more right angled). But these could easily be manifestations of environmental influences during development and/or possibly influences of the transposons mentioned below creating variation. I have seen " gs" reappear in F5 lines that showed no striping (not even faint) in all previous generations. Apparently there are transposons or "jumping genes" influencing expression, which may be coupled with exogenous factors that may account for " gs" just "showing up" (I would note that " gs" has to be around in the first place for exogenous factors to do so)> These are noted in this paper.
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gs gene
Jan 13, 2011 15:40:55 GMT -8
Post by DarJones on Jan 13, 2011 15:40:55 GMT -8
A very telling part of that description is the statement that it is believed derived from Gulf State Market.
Gulf State market is a medium to large fruited indeterminate globe shaped deep pink/purple tomato.
This would infer that the gs variety in the earliest description was a large globe shaped red tomato.
DarJones
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gs gene
Jan 14, 2011 0:11:25 GMT -8
Post by Tom Wagner on Jan 14, 2011 0:11:25 GMT -8
Many years after breeding all of the striped tomato clones and with the advent of the computer to research things I began to believe that my source of the gs gene was likely from the Gulf State Market too! I not even thought of the selection: NSL 109081 - Solanum lycopersicum - RHEINLANDS RUHM as a possibility. It was donated by Charlie Rick in 1980 to the TGRC, much too late since my first selection was made much earlier in Iowa.
Most of my hard copy catalogs of the tomato collection from the Iowa days is in storage, along with the later computer paper documents with all those holes and folded together in a near endless fashion. There are too many uncertainties to presume the actual source.of the gs gene. It is somewhat serendipitous that I named my first collection of the tomato from Iowa as Green Stripe --or GS for short.
Another thing is the spontaneous mutation that occur in tomatoes for stripes. While I was with the DiMare folks in Newman, CA., the pickers of mature green tomatoes would go crazy when they found tomato fruits with green stripes. This happened many times while out with the pickers and it would happen in many varieties - Merced, Shady Lady, Sunny, Sunray, etc., but most of the time when I would save seed from those fruits...the striping would not show up again. I forget what they call it when that happens. But because it does show up on one branch off the vine, I am thinking that there may be some actual gs mutation happening. Somewhere...I have some old seed of those that bred true, but since they were not as pretty, I did not pursue them much
The fact that my striping patterns were bouncing all over the place in the 70's. Some fruits would have maybe one or two faint stripes, others a bit more, up towards a near complete drenching of the green stripes close to 90% stripes. I rather favored the 60% stripe that the original Green Zebra prototype had.
Some other things were happening. The green flesh lines that I started out with had red center streaks in the middle of the fruits. I eliminated that for the Green Zebra and Green Grape. It seems the description often used for gf is with the red streak.
Another thing happened with the stripes (gs) is the zig-zag pattern of stripes that occurs in my Casady's Folly and a few other lines. Instead of straight lines from the stem end to the bud end, the stripes zipper. Is that a mutation or is that just a manifestation of the long fruits causing the zippering?
More than a few times I came up with green fleshed tomatoes that were several shades deeper green than what the Green Zebra and Green Grape had. Those seem to have an intense chlorophyll taste--not bad, just different. I had not released any of those yet.
Tom Wagner
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gs gene
Jan 16, 2011 19:26:18 GMT -8
Post by kctomato on Jan 16, 2011 19:26:18 GMT -8
What I got from the Stubbes info was that he "developed" a 'Rheinlands Ruhm' line by incorporating the gs gene. I would assume via backcrossing and possibly from material he got from Larsen. The one RR line donated to TGRC would be the typical Rheinlands Ruhm (red) as it was in many studies as a "baseline" for comparison in scientific tests. That is the reason some of the named lines are kept there - science must be testable and repeatable so there is value in saving such lines used in tests like this one and 'Alisa Craig'. Unfortunately, I do not have a decent enough library to easily access Stubbe's work and my German is just so-so. This is likely the original line for "gs" tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA0212Since it lists it as coming from 'Gulf State Market' and was donated by Larsen. Here is another, PI 254648, also called 'Burd|ck 91-17' (also LA 2370) that came from the USDA Ames Station and contained "gs" www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1195495This document notes it came from Ames in 1958 to the Geneva Station sun.ars-grin.gov:8080/npgs_public/prodweb.pdf0?in_vol=166&in_suffix=&in_page=374Burd|ck was a researcher at the University of Arkansas. I assume he too incorporated " gs" from Larsen into some of his material to get 'Burd|ck 91-17'. At TGRC this line is noted as LA 2370. It has two other traits, nippled tip and white flowers, which may help you determine if you had the Larsen line or the Burd|ck/Ames source. Burd|ck is B u r d i c k to get past the software changing it to "Burthingy" There are a number of genes which produce stripes in green immature fruit. One I have seen repeatedly seems to be associated with gf. It doesn't segregate like the dominant Fs - Fruit stripe - gene though. Other genes which do this seem secondary. Some of the species I have grown do this. Most green fruit (those without red centers or the ry <bicolor gene> not present) are the result of two recessive genes gf/gf and r/r (green flesh and yellow flesh) expressed at the same time. Gr - green ripe, is the other green flesh gene with red in the center. Gr - Fruit flesh turns slowly to yellowish green, remains firm; resembles gf, except that center of fruit turns red.
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