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Post by murgatroyd on Sept 20, 2010 21:42:15 GMT -8
How does one know, when hybridizing, which plant to use as a pollen parent and which to use as the pod(?) parent? Does a pollen vs. pod parent have a better chance of giving the offspring certain types of traits?
For example if I was going to cross Red Pear Piriform tomato with Sungold cherry tomato (or perhaps a black cherry tomato) are there any traits that would come through better using each as the pod or pollen parent?
Would I be accurate in predicting there would be a wide variety of forms in the seedlings?
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Post by Tom Wagner on Sept 20, 2010 22:56:05 GMT -8
www.johnnyseeds.com/p-7113-red-pear-piriform.aspxThe link above shows a good example of the piriform tomato. Since you are a new member, you may wish to go back into the many topics on this forum to find some hints for possible answers to your question. As far as a best way to cross as to male or female parents, I try to use the most rare variety as the female because of the mystique of the game. If you wish to make the reciprocal, that is always a good idea to make sure the cross takes. Testing each hybrid against each other is fun. Crossing straight bred lines to other straight lines produces a uniform crop of seedlings. Saving the seed of the hybrids is important. With SunGold as a parent...it throws half of the seedlings red...the other half gold. It is easier to emasculate the larger fruited flowers than cherry types.
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Post by thefuture on Sept 21, 2010 8:37:55 GMT -8
TW,
What do you make of the claims that Lycopersicon cheesmanii is "of particular interest for its resistance to a number of tomato pests and has been used to cross breed with regular tomatoes to confer desired traits."
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Post by Tom Wagner on Sept 21, 2010 10:00:46 GMT -8
Oh, I think there is always room to work with the cheesmanii lines. I have, but...obviously much of that was done in the past. I wanted recombinations out of the crossing efforts that were fine laced leaves, gold fruits and large vines. Those that were red....don't believe I saved those, were uninteresting.
Most of my lines are current are in my Cheesmanii Gold and Tasmanian Gold series. Both of those are gold cherries with fine cut leaves with woolly foliage. It seems the inbreeding depression that comes with woolly types led me to breed them out to other lines. So this year's breeding lines are so far removed from cheesmanii that I am not sure much is left from the original.
Most of my work with tomatoes this year was to find homes for my many lines of hybrids and OP types that I am now inundated with seed extraction and little time to think of what I should have done in regards to further crossings.
Perhaps I will dust off my old seed collections and regrow some of the wild species next year.
Since I don't have to worry about salty soil or water here, cheesmanii did not take priority.
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Post by murgatroyd on Sept 21, 2010 13:19:54 GMT -8
www.johnnyseeds.com/p-7113-red-pear-piriform.aspxThe link above shows a good example of the piriform tomato. Since you are a new member, you may wish to go back into the many topics on this forum to find some hints for possible answers to your question. I went back to the older posts and started reading about Banana Leg crosses and how the BL shape and striping appear dominant in the crossed offspring. It sprang to mind that it would be fun to cross BL with Sungold to get Cherry Banana Legs! Sounds tasty to me. Can you imagine a spray of striped cherry tomatoes with the pointed shape. They would look like cayenne Christmas tree lights! LOL (Going back to reading the older posts now.) |
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Post by Tom Wagner on Sept 21, 2010 13:43:35 GMT -8
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Post by Tom Wagner on Sept 21, 2010 14:26:27 GMT -8
F-1 of (Bryan Grape x Green Sleeves) x Verde Rallado
X-----------------------
F-1 of (Black Plum x Casady's Folly) x Black Prince
The F-1 of the above F-1's in this rather complicated cross resulted in a pretty red grape/roma with yellow stripes. The stripes come from Verde Rallado which is for all practical purposes..a Green Zebra.......and Green Sleeves and Casady's Folly. A black stripe Roma or longer will likely show up in some of the F-2 seedlings.
I just extracted the F-2 seed
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Post by murgatroyd on Sept 22, 2010 8:12:32 GMT -8
So, by growing crossed seeds out for 8 years or the F8 generation, the offspring will reach some sort of stable plant? Do people grow 2 generations a year in a green house so they reach stability in 4 years?
That little red with gold pointed tomato is very handsome!
Does it taste as good as it looks?
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Post by DarJones on Sept 22, 2010 11:05:26 GMT -8
You can squeeze out 4 generations in a year if you are aggressive and grow short season varieties. It is easier if you can ship seed to New Zealand and let them grow a couple of generations in their summer and then return seed to the northern hemisphere for a further generation or two.
DarJones
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Post by Tom Wagner on Sept 22, 2010 23:10:34 GMT -8
Murgatroyd,
I can pretty much start a prototype of a near stable variety often times just by selecting a single F-2 plant that shows a nice mix of the recessive traits that are homozygous at that stage. Sweet Casady is but one example of that level of confidence. It was true breeding for red and yellow stripes, long fruit shapes, small sized fruits and a few other traits. Since the variety is not stable in a few other traits that are not so obvious...only time will tell what full sibs and grand sibs will show. Flavor is one of the tricky things that need a few more generations to see what variations occur. Getting to the F-5 or F-8 generation may involve many sub lines times sub lines. It is not unheard of for me to have hundreds of segregating lines looking for just the right fix. The seed is put into a seed bank at each filial generation and I often go back a few years to restart the selection process. So for every finished variety...one may have hundreds of alternate sub lines to choose from.
I distributed about fifty named lines out of F-2 plants that were saved as F-3 seed with different names throughout Europe last year. That was in the segregating lines of Ananas Noir x Green Zebra. Zebra Rita was my favorite in Belgium last year. I will have to see what the results were this year there. If seed of Zebra Rita was saved this year it would be F-4. It should have looked much like last year's fruit...clear ep, green flesh, green stripes, larger size than Green Zebra and with nuances of Ananas Noir in the flavor. Growing those out will be done to make sure that each seedling plants produces the same again, albeit the better sibs saved for whatever reason.
To give you another example of selection at the F-2 level is important. This season, Austria grew 180 F-2 plants of Blue P-20 x Green Zebra. They saved seed from only 12 of those plants. I will post a picture on my blog soon of the best 9. They range from Green Zebra look alikes to blues, with solid yellows, striped, so on.... in-between. Many of those may not be saved next year...only the ones that appeal to the growers there. I will have a sample of the seed in order to follow their progress.
I have not been able to find anyone here in the PNW that has a greenhouse warm enough for tomatoes during the winter. I don't have the money to build one myself or pay someone to grow them for me. When I was in California I got three crops a year in.
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