Post by Tom Wagner on Aug 15, 2008 9:36:39 GMT -8
Tomato Seed Saving Conventions
The question of when a person can save seed from a tomato fruit, and how ripe the fruit must be, appears to be an on-going concern for quite a few people.
Is it necessary, in other words—absolutely essential, that the fruit be of full color? Or—can one safely harbor personal choices as to when a fruit is mature enough so that the extracted seed will germinate? Is there an optional time for the tomato fruit to ripen? What are the options regarding possible times that offer possible, but not necessary timings of seed extraction? Are there suggestions that are near obligatory—compulsions or conventions that state that a tomato fruit must show color before seed can be extracted?
The simple answer:
Anytime the tomato fruit develops a gel around the seed.
Normally this occurs during the mature-green stage.
IMMATURE-GREEN - If the seeds are cut by the knife, the fruit is still immature
MATURE-GREEN -the surface of the tomato is completely green in color. The shade of green color may vary from light to dark. This stage predates the breaker stage by a single day or a few days to about a week.
BREAKERS -there is a definite break in color from green to tannish-yellow, pink or red on not more than 10 percent of the surface.
The ripening stages in the tomato fruit:
Immature
Mature-green
Breaker
Pink
Red
If you look closely at tomatoes -mature greens have a white/yellowish star on the blossom end, (opposite of the stem), but the best test of maturity is to cut the tomato in half. If you don’t see the gel around the seed, or if your teeth easily bite through the seed, or if your fingers can slip the seed coat off the seed, don’t try to save the seed.
I am a tagger! I am constantly making crosses on most tomato plants. I tag the flower or flower cluster with a string tag that shows the female and male parents, number of buds crossed, and the date of pollination. Because I never can keep folks out of my tomato patches, I am bound by experience to pick the crossed fruit at the mature-green or breaker stage. I have to! People see a ripe tomato and they automatically pick it without thinking there could be a tag involved.
Temperatures, seasons, variety, locale, all go into to fray of how long it takes from a pollination to ripe duration. It can vary by three weeks or more. I usually watch for the first blush on my earlier crosses to determine the optimum picking times. Weather under 55 degrees Fahrenheit slows the ripening process especially true here in the PNW and in winter cool greenhouses. Cherry tomatoes normally ripen their seed before large fruited types.
If I pick a mature-green, I leave it in indoor storage at 65 to 70 F for the fastest ripening time. On varieties that I need to check for color and flavor and verity, I do that. Otherwise, I am often extracting seed from mature-greens for the seed.
If you live in a hot climate, mature-green picked tomatoes will not ripen normally at temperatures above 80 F, due to decay and flavor problems, mostly.
One of the reasons I like about mature-green seed extraction is that I worry less about alternaria decay. As the fall season approaches here in the PNW, I know that cooler weather soon will haunt me. It is not so well known that some tomato quality loss due to chilling can be expected in fall-grown tomatoes exposed for over 95 hours to temperatures below 60 F during the week before harvest. Most nights here in the Everett, WA. area are below 60 F. even in the middle of the summer. This definitely reflects in the poorer flavors I get here as opposed to California or Kansas where I lived most of my life.
I had tested thousand of breeding lines of tomatoes for mature-green ripening in commercial practice, as mature-green tomatoes are commonly treated with supplemental ethylene to hasten ripening within a bin of green tomatoes. You learn quickly what maturity is needed in tomatoes by picking a whole vine of tomatoes of various maturities and viewing the results under ethylene. A part of my research was to rapidly sow seed from a cross or segregating line to start the next generation with year around sowing, planting, and harvesting in the various climates of California and supplemental greenhouse grow-outs. Getting the next generation of seed necessitated having to save seed and time by extracting early.
The following picture of a cluster of tomatoes is perfect for illustrating my points of when to harvest. There are a total of 6 fruits on this cluster; one is fully red, one is showing color, two are at the mature-green stage and the last two with the light green color may or may not be mature enough for seed extraction. Most tomato clusters bloom from the first to the last within a week or so. In this case I would pick all and extract the seed from all six immediately. There are many varieties that have a longer duration between seed set between first and last, and that is where you have to know your variety, or watch with abated breath. Please click on this photo for my points:
heathersgarden.typepad.com/.a...45168834-500wi
The next photo will show the various stages of ripening of a Roma type tomato. The green tomato on the far left might be mature enough for seed extraction but a cross section would tell for sure. Since I use TSP to clean seed, the chemical will quickly tell me if the seed is mature enough. When I rinse the seed and rub the seed against the screen, the seed will slip if not mature enough. A quick float-off will further the ridding of immature seed.
www.hort.purdue.edu/rhodcv/ho.../tomstages.jpg
Why, again, do I extract seed from un-ripe tomatoes?
I have a lot of extraction to do. Gnats fly around ripe tomatoes, and my wife doesn’t tolerate ‘em well. She also hates the smell of ripening tomatoes. They do give off ethylene and even to this day tomatoes remind her of me bringing home hundred of pounds of ethylene-ripened tomatoes to extract seed and the ethylene smell from the gassing house still haunts her!
I pick tomatoes from plants grown in very small pots (2”) and often the plant dies before the tomatoes can turn color. A few thousand vines grown this way requires speedy Gonzaleses. If I don’t extract seed from an un-ripe tomato, I should have no problem waiting for another day.
I don’t ferment. Wife wouldn’t tolerate that anymore that my other foolishnesses. My personal feeling is that fermenting tomato seed is akin to foolishness. I trust the disease control and speediness of TSP, chlorine rinse, and hot water treatments. I can't imagine thousands of cups of fermenting seeds and pulp setting around!
I don’t trust tomatoes to ripen and then me getting around to them soon enough. The seed quality diminishes rapidly in ripening fruit. The gel degradates and pre-mature sprouting, disease vectors and whatnots occur.
As I am prone to say: Other than that I have no strong opinion on the matter!
Tom Wagner
The question of when a person can save seed from a tomato fruit, and how ripe the fruit must be, appears to be an on-going concern for quite a few people.
Is it necessary, in other words—absolutely essential, that the fruit be of full color? Or—can one safely harbor personal choices as to when a fruit is mature enough so that the extracted seed will germinate? Is there an optional time for the tomato fruit to ripen? What are the options regarding possible times that offer possible, but not necessary timings of seed extraction? Are there suggestions that are near obligatory—compulsions or conventions that state that a tomato fruit must show color before seed can be extracted?
The simple answer:
Anytime the tomato fruit develops a gel around the seed.
Normally this occurs during the mature-green stage.
IMMATURE-GREEN - If the seeds are cut by the knife, the fruit is still immature
MATURE-GREEN -the surface of the tomato is completely green in color. The shade of green color may vary from light to dark. This stage predates the breaker stage by a single day or a few days to about a week.
BREAKERS -there is a definite break in color from green to tannish-yellow, pink or red on not more than 10 percent of the surface.
The ripening stages in the tomato fruit:
Immature
Mature-green
Breaker
Pink
Red
If you look closely at tomatoes -mature greens have a white/yellowish star on the blossom end, (opposite of the stem), but the best test of maturity is to cut the tomato in half. If you don’t see the gel around the seed, or if your teeth easily bite through the seed, or if your fingers can slip the seed coat off the seed, don’t try to save the seed.
I am a tagger! I am constantly making crosses on most tomato plants. I tag the flower or flower cluster with a string tag that shows the female and male parents, number of buds crossed, and the date of pollination. Because I never can keep folks out of my tomato patches, I am bound by experience to pick the crossed fruit at the mature-green or breaker stage. I have to! People see a ripe tomato and they automatically pick it without thinking there could be a tag involved.
Temperatures, seasons, variety, locale, all go into to fray of how long it takes from a pollination to ripe duration. It can vary by three weeks or more. I usually watch for the first blush on my earlier crosses to determine the optimum picking times. Weather under 55 degrees Fahrenheit slows the ripening process especially true here in the PNW and in winter cool greenhouses. Cherry tomatoes normally ripen their seed before large fruited types.
If I pick a mature-green, I leave it in indoor storage at 65 to 70 F for the fastest ripening time. On varieties that I need to check for color and flavor and verity, I do that. Otherwise, I am often extracting seed from mature-greens for the seed.
If you live in a hot climate, mature-green picked tomatoes will not ripen normally at temperatures above 80 F, due to decay and flavor problems, mostly.
One of the reasons I like about mature-green seed extraction is that I worry less about alternaria decay. As the fall season approaches here in the PNW, I know that cooler weather soon will haunt me. It is not so well known that some tomato quality loss due to chilling can be expected in fall-grown tomatoes exposed for over 95 hours to temperatures below 60 F during the week before harvest. Most nights here in the Everett, WA. area are below 60 F. even in the middle of the summer. This definitely reflects in the poorer flavors I get here as opposed to California or Kansas where I lived most of my life.
I had tested thousand of breeding lines of tomatoes for mature-green ripening in commercial practice, as mature-green tomatoes are commonly treated with supplemental ethylene to hasten ripening within a bin of green tomatoes. You learn quickly what maturity is needed in tomatoes by picking a whole vine of tomatoes of various maturities and viewing the results under ethylene. A part of my research was to rapidly sow seed from a cross or segregating line to start the next generation with year around sowing, planting, and harvesting in the various climates of California and supplemental greenhouse grow-outs. Getting the next generation of seed necessitated having to save seed and time by extracting early.
The following picture of a cluster of tomatoes is perfect for illustrating my points of when to harvest. There are a total of 6 fruits on this cluster; one is fully red, one is showing color, two are at the mature-green stage and the last two with the light green color may or may not be mature enough for seed extraction. Most tomato clusters bloom from the first to the last within a week or so. In this case I would pick all and extract the seed from all six immediately. There are many varieties that have a longer duration between seed set between first and last, and that is where you have to know your variety, or watch with abated breath. Please click on this photo for my points:
heathersgarden.typepad.com/.a...45168834-500wi
The next photo will show the various stages of ripening of a Roma type tomato. The green tomato on the far left might be mature enough for seed extraction but a cross section would tell for sure. Since I use TSP to clean seed, the chemical will quickly tell me if the seed is mature enough. When I rinse the seed and rub the seed against the screen, the seed will slip if not mature enough. A quick float-off will further the ridding of immature seed.
www.hort.purdue.edu/rhodcv/ho.../tomstages.jpg
Why, again, do I extract seed from un-ripe tomatoes?
I have a lot of extraction to do. Gnats fly around ripe tomatoes, and my wife doesn’t tolerate ‘em well. She also hates the smell of ripening tomatoes. They do give off ethylene and even to this day tomatoes remind her of me bringing home hundred of pounds of ethylene-ripened tomatoes to extract seed and the ethylene smell from the gassing house still haunts her!
I pick tomatoes from plants grown in very small pots (2”) and often the plant dies before the tomatoes can turn color. A few thousand vines grown this way requires speedy Gonzaleses. If I don’t extract seed from an un-ripe tomato, I should have no problem waiting for another day.
I don’t ferment. Wife wouldn’t tolerate that anymore that my other foolishnesses. My personal feeling is that fermenting tomato seed is akin to foolishness. I trust the disease control and speediness of TSP, chlorine rinse, and hot water treatments. I can't imagine thousands of cups of fermenting seeds and pulp setting around!
I don’t trust tomatoes to ripen and then me getting around to them soon enough. The seed quality diminishes rapidly in ripening fruit. The gel degradates and pre-mature sprouting, disease vectors and whatnots occur.
As I am prone to say: Other than that I have no strong opinion on the matter!
Tom Wagner
