OSU blue seeds

[ottawagardener]

Saved some tomato seed from some OSU crosses via Canadamike and I noticed that some of the seed has purple markings or spots near one side. I have never seen this before on a tomato seed. Is this a result of the OSU genes or is it something else I should be aware of?

[Tom Wagner]

I have not seen those purple marking on any seed of OSU P-20 Blue recombinants. Naturally, I would like to see that as a special marker. Show me the color....lol

[murgatroyd]

Are these the tomatoes that people said the early versions tasted like ink? If it is I saw a reference that stated it was crossed with Sungold to make it tastier. Or maybe Sungold was just one of the varieties they tried crossing with.

[DarJones]

OSU was using Sungold in an attempt to improve the flavor. I have not heard if they were successful.

I grew seed of a complex hybrid involving P20 and Sungold this year and had one plant that produced exceptionally good flavored fruit. The tomatoes had deep blue/black shoulders, were about an inch diameter, and had incredibly intense red where they were shaded. I would rate brix at least 12 which is as high as Sungold gets. The plan for now is to grow them next year and see if something can be stabilized.

DarJones

[Tom Wagner]

DarJones and I are both growing independent breeding lines such as SunGold...Sun Sugar....Solid Gold....Flamme....varieties with Blue P-20 inputs. Of course, I have the Sweet 100 types, Green Grape, Beyond Verde Claro, Texas Wild, Matt's Wild,...with blue genes. Some of my more promising lines with blue genes include San Francisco Fog; hoping for a Blue Fog.....Black Russian for a Blue Russian. I have hundreds of separate selections going simultaneously, therefore I have no idea where I am going with all of these.

Flavor in blue tomatoes has got to be better than the OSU line at present.

[murgatroyd]

Anyone tried crossing the blue with one of the medium/large white tomatoes?

P.S. Blue Fog sounds really neat.

[biofutur]

fine program really

Oct 20, 2010 22:19:07 GMT -8 Tom Wagner said:

DarJones and I are both growing independent breeding lines such as SunGold...Sun Sugar....Solid Gold....Flamme....varieties with Blue P-20 inputs. Of course, I have the Sweet 100 types, Green Grape, Beyond Verde Claro, Texas Wild, Matt's Wild,...with blue genes. Some of my more promising lines with blue genes include San Francisco Fog; hoping for a Blue Fog.....Black Russian for a Blue Russian. I have hundreds of separate selections going simultaneously, therefore I have no idea where I am going with all of these.

Flavor in blue tomatoes has got to be better than the OSU line at present.

[ottawagardener]

I wish I could send you a picture but my camera does not take such fine details - the megamicro function is not longer working. I took another look at them dry and it is less easy to see the dark colour but it follows along one side of the tomato seed. When I wet some for replanting, I'll do some of those seeds and try and get a closeup.

I was worried that it might be evidence of something wrong with the seed or embryo then thought that maybe it had something to do with the OSU?

[DarJones]

The blue/black color does not normally extend into the seed cavities of the fruit. Still interesting if it is affecting seed. I grew several segregating lines this past summer and had one really interesting plant that produced black on black fruit. It was a result of a cross Keith Mueller made with a black when ripe variety adding in the anthocyanin genes from P20.

I agree with Tom about flavor. It is pretty bad in the original from OSU and it is moderately poor in most of the crosses. I'm still undecided about the cause of the flavor. Blueberries have huge amounts of anthocyanin, yet they are delicious. What is causing the flavor effect of anthocyanin in tomatoes? It may be a result of linked genes that are carried along on chromosome strands when a group of genes are introgressed. There are 3 anthocyanin genes involved in the OSU breeding material.

DarJones

[kctomato]

Several of Meyers students have their thesis/dissertations online from the scholarship archives at the OSU Library. Forgive me if I spell these wrong:
Boches, P
Dalotto
Mes
are all lead names to search by with anthocyanin. Kudos to Mark M (frogsleap) for pointing one out on FB. Jones,C is another to look up but I did not find it in the archives. One can find that one in the Journal of Hort Sci.

Anyway, in at least two of those papers one can find info pertaining to relations of anthocyanins and flavanoids (what effect the "blue" background has on flavor components and their pathways). I'm sorry but I cannot summarize it correctly from memory. I found parts of these papers very difficult and challenging to read. But there was info there about influences on flavor, carry over from wild and even some interesting findings concernings results in red backgrounds verses yellow/orange (yellow gene and Beta gene). Jones's paper was referred to concerning these traits and that is a rainy day visit to the edu library for me.

White fruit, which is really a yellow flesh variant with clear skin, may look cool but I'd suspect it would be lacking if not bankably hideous in flavor.

In segregations with clear skin I didn't quite get the expected ratio. However due to my early selection process in the seedling stage I could have baised that result.

[kctomato]

Mark posted another paper on FB tonight:

Identification of loci affecting flavour volatile emissions in tomato fruits
Denise M. Tieman, Michelle Zeigler, Eric A. Schmelz, Mark G. Taylor, Peter Bliss, Matias Kirst and Harry J. Klee . Journal of Experimental Botany, Vol. 57, No. 4, pp. 887–896, 2006
www.hos.ufl.edu/kleeweb/papers/Tieman%20JXB.pdf


Though this statement does not specifically relate to anthocyanins it is telling:

"It was further shown that emissions of carotenoid-derived volatiles were directly correlated with the fruit carotenoid content."

and

there was good agreement between the reported values of carotenoids in the colour mutants and the apocarotenoid volatiles that are predicted to be derived from them.

Seemed obvious to me. Nice it is confirmed with "science".

Recently, a similar analysis with an overlapping set of carotenoid mutants has been published (Lewinsohn et al., 2005). Their results, together with ours, indicate that a major determinant of apocarotenoid volatiles is the level of the precursor carotenoid.

The conclusion that emissions of carotenoid-derived volatiles are associated most closely with carotenoid content suggests that it will be challenging specifically to alter the emissions of these tomato apocarotenoid volatiles without significantly affecting the nutrient composition of the fruits.

[/i][/blockquote]

I found this interesting

As a first step toward that goal, genetic loci with increased volatile emissions relative to the S. lycopersicum parent, M82, have been identified. In order rigorously to test the population, volatile emissions were measured over multiple seasons. In general, the absolute levels of volatile emissions varied substantially from season to season. However, when values were expressed relative to the parental control, M82, the variation between seasons was not significant, despite three different growing locations and the different seasons (June
harvest versus November harvest).

Environmental effect was negligible on volatiles.

However:

In general, there was much higher variation in acid content across seasons, suggesting that acids are more susceptible to environmental influences than are volatiles.

Clearly certain metabolites must be assessed over numerous seasons before the effects of QTLs can be determined.

Environment plays a role with acid contents (not meaning pH necessarily). It will require more work to determine genetic effects on acids compared to volatiles.

In conclusion, a number of QTLs have been identified
that reproducibly alter the composition of volatile and nonvolatile
chemicals that contribute to overall fruit flavour.
These QTLs affect volatiles that are both positive and
negative contributors to tomato flavour. In the short term,
linked molecular markers should be useful for breeding
programmes aimed at improving fruit flavour. In the longer
term, genes responsible for controlling levels of these
important chemicals will be important tools for understanding
the complex interactions that ultimately integrate to
provide the unique flavour of a tomato.

[Tom Wagner]

Volatiles would be nice to follow if we average Joe types had data applying to our own research, breeding, variety development, etc. Funny that M82 was mentioned in the previous message...it is a variety that I think was used in the early pedigrees of the Blue OSU lines. A much studied variety but when I had it in California I did not think much of it. Oh, Well!

Some links to M82...pictures, leaf types, fruit shape, genetic studies, plant habits, mutations, quite a busy tomato..

zamir.sgn.cornell.edu/mutants/links/m82.html

www.evogene.com/uploads/new26_file.pdf


www.amjbot.org/content/vol94/issue6/images/small/abot-94-06-15-f01.gif

jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/57/9/2037/F1.expansion.html


I had opportunities to extract seed today from some blue breeding lines....one is a back cross.. very blue cherry with some fair late blight resistance...another is a Sweet 100 type blue with some neat flavors.....yet another is a blue with woolly foliage and fruit with some blight resistance, carrying TSWV genes, blue stems

[kctomato]

Just to clarify, M82 isn't being used as a parent to make a lines for release. It is used here, and in the OSU studies, as a baseline comparison because metabolic and genetic aspects of it are well understood.

I suspect Legend maybe in P20. I think it was Mes's paper that eluded to these lines seeing if they picked up late blight resistance. That is one reason I want to look at the Jones paper. Since he did the original work there may be more direct info about the background parent lines.

In the Zamfir/Cornell reference it shows how M82 is used as a baseline background for understanding induced mutations (where they occur and what effects to M82's physiology/metabolism).
zamir.sgn.cornell.edu/mutants/links/family.html

[paquebot]

I do have one question about something which I haven't figured out from the beginning. Why does it seem that everyone is using OSU Blue almost entirely as a cross rather than perfecting it? I grew 12 plants this year and whatever strain I had produced a massive amount of a 1½" to 2" salad type on 8 or 9 of them. Several plants acted more like determinates and with fewer fruit. One showed signs of being a potentially nice beefsteak type but in the 3" size. What was most interesting with that plant is that one lateral produced striped oblate fruit with red vertical stripes. If the basic OSU Blue genetic makeup is that wild, I can't imagine how one can expect the crosses with other varieties to be anything but a long, long process to stabilize.

Martin

[Tom Wagner]

Paquebot (Mailboat?)

You have not been posting that many times, so I don't know how much you know about my breeding work.....but your questions are good to have.

I do have one question about something which I haven't figured out from the beginning. Why does it seem that everyone is using OSU Blue almost entirely as a cross rather than perfecting it?

I haven't figured out how to perfect the OSU Blue without first making a wide series of crosses, back crosses, sib crosses, selfings, or repeated outcrosses to eliminate the M82 type background. Since we are working with two different genes...one for purple stems/leaves and one for purple shoulders.....it is pretty easy to get rather perfected proto-types for future releases. I have tons of blues that I could release right away if that was my goal.

It is not within my lifetime, to select anymore with just selections within a population to perfect a line. New predictable germplasm intrusions that I am using is for making the OSU Blue as it is a 'has been' variety. I am looking forward to an official OSU release so that I know how to compare my lines with theirs. It is a veritable explosion of blue varieties that is awaiting release from me, however since the original blue is not technically released....it would be putting the cart before the horse. I am not sure how the public will envison new blues when the original blue is not in packet sales. Rarely is a new 'improved' improved variety available before the parental line is available to the larger public.

I grew 12 plants this year and whatever strain I had produced a massive amount of a 1½" to 2" salad type on 8 or 9 of them. Several plants acted more like determinates and with fewer fruit.

I don't like the original blue, P-20, since it is a magnet for maladies and is for me a determinate vine. I am looking for alternate types...strong indeterminates to get better flavor and yield, prostrate vines for getting more sunlight to the fruits, longer internode lengths to reduce shading, dwarf types, etc., etc.

One showed signs of being a potentially nice beefsteak type but in the 3" size.

Not sure how stable that one would be....I am working fairly successfully to get large slicers all the way down to 1/2 inch fruits. The smaller the fruit ....the more anthocyanin per weight of the fruit is available. The tiny ones dry up into blue raisin like halves.

If the basic OSU Blue genetic makeup is that wild, I can't imagine how one can expect the crosses with other varieties to be anything but a long, long process to stabilize.

It does seem to be to me that the two blue genes are not that difficult to stabilize into workable clones. Many of my clones are stable in the genes that I want with some minor details to be worked out with individual or groups of growers/gardeners to help select promising seed parents.