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Post by reed on Sept 7, 2015 20:31:48 GMT -5
reed , sounds interesting (but your picture isn't loading again - thanks for fixing that!). Looking forward to seeing it :>) I don't know what is up with the pictures sometimes, trying again below.  It always works on my computer, I'll check in the morning at work and see if it worked there. |
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Post by reed on Jun 23, 2016 19:05:58 GMT -5
I saved and planted seed from the red and orange fruit that I believe to be a cross but I don't know what with. Because of space restrictions I just stuck about 15 plants into a big pot. All I really wanted was to get more seed in case I got more interested in them later, little tomatoes are really not a priority for me. I was look today and found some interesting phenotypes showing up. Only three plants have fruited so far and the are all different. One is a lot bigger than the original currents, the biggest is about the size of a quarter as of today and shaped different.  The next one is round like they always were but bigger still than last year, about nickel sized as of right now.  And then these weird little egg shaped ones.  Three plants setting fruit and three different looking fruits. It should be fun to see what the other dozen or so plants do. I'll be saving lots of these seeds in hopes folks will want them. I don't have room to go on with many of these but don't want them to be lost. |
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Post by walt on Aug 26, 2016 15:18:09 GMT -5
This is my first post in years. But I was a professional tomato breeder from 1978 through 1981. I had run out of money for grad school, and joined the Peace Corps. They sent to Niger, where I was appointed tomato breeder. The only one in the country.
I went into shock for about 6 weeks,d oing little but wonder how to start a tomato breeding breeding program from scratch. Finally I realized that anything I tried would be better than doing nothing. So I started muddling around. Later I found that sometimes doing nothing IS better than doing things wrong, but that turned out not to apply in this case.
So I wrote to Dr. Charles Rick, who had spent much of his life collecting tomatoes in South America, asking about heat and drought tolerant topmatoes. He sent me seeds of 3 accessions. Two were cherry-sized but shaped like beefstake tomatoes. They were collected from the wild in hot, dry areas. The third was LA 0722, a S. pimpinefolium accession. With it he sent a photograph of where he had collected it. There was a saguaro cactus and a green mound (the tomato plant) and nothing but rocks to the horizzon.
So I started the seeds, with Super Marmand as a control. Super Marmand was a commonly used tomato in Niger, in the clay soil areas with irrigation.
So I planted seedlings of each of the 4 kinds of tomatoes in dune soil. I watered them until they were established and let them go. It was the start of the "rainy season" Much like summer in Kansas.
Super Marmand surived for a few months. No flowers and no fruit. No vigor either. It looked pathetic until it died.
The 2 cherry-beefsteak tomatoes lived and each produced 5 or 6 fruit each. They were sad looking plants, but lived until the last rain, then died.
The LA 0722 made itself at home. It grew, it looked happy, it bloomed, it bore pea-sized fruit, but many of them. 6 weeks after the last rain of the season, it still was thriving, until a herd of cows walked over them and that did them in.
Pea sized tomatoes didn't look promicing to me, so I crossed LA 0722 with various domestic tomatoes. The F1s were large-cherry sized, tasted good until the start of the cold season, when they became bitter, as did LA 0722. The F2s averaged about the same, but with some variation in size, not much. Don't know about change in flavor as the cold season started. That is as far as I got before leaving.
By planting during the cold season, I found that LA 0722 germinates in cold soil. I did tests in the refridgerator to make sure that was the case. After all, when a bunch of tomato varieties are planted at the same time, there could be many reasons why only pne kind comes up. I was still new at this.
This all started in 1978. When I got bck to the USA, I obtained more LA 0722 and tried crossed again, but I was employed working with sunflowers, sorghum, and and a few other crops. The tomatoes were neglected.
I recently retired and ordered more LA 0722. The tomato gene stock center is temporarily shut down due to a viroid infection. I'll be getting seed when they are sure their stocks are free of the viroids.
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Post by jondear on Aug 26, 2016 19:39:43 GMT -5
Welcome back Walt.
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Post by philagardener on Aug 26, 2016 20:39:34 GMT -5
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Post by steev on Aug 26, 2016 22:53:44 GMT -5
Damn! I love the expertise this board offers!
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Post by walt on Aug 27, 2016 13:00:40 GMT -5
Thanks people for the welcome back. And thanks especially philagardener for the link. I'll be checking if this is a source of LA 0722. And it is quite interesting even if it isn't a source of LA 0722.
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Post by walt on Dec 3, 2016 14:19:10 GMT -5
LA 0722 and a brown-seed male sterile version of Ailsa Craig tomato arrived today. I'll be sterilizing and planting 3 seeds of each and planting them today. Sterilizing seed is a precaution due to getting seeds from the gene stock center which is still fighting the viroid. Soaking 15 min. in 50% laundry bleach is suposed to do the job.
The brown-seed gene is linked to the male sterile gene, so about 95% of the plants from the brown seeds will be male sterile. That will make crossing easier and quicker to identify successful crosses. F1 hybrid seeds will be the normal color.
I have a condition called essential tremor, which makes my hands shake. As I age it gets worse, and hand pollinations get harder. So does typing. Otherwise it isn't a big problem It appears to be a single dominant trait. At least it isn't serious or affect my health or ability to do work, other than delicate work like pollinations. so that's why I got the male sterile-brown seed gene stock.
So by spring I hope to have an F2 population segregating for cold tolerance, heat tolerance, drought tolerance, late season flavor, male sterility, brown seeds, fruit size, and plant vigor.
It'll be fun.
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Post by keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.) on Jan 6, 2017 15:39:29 GMT -5
Really cool discussion! Those tiny wild beefsteak tomatoes sound cool. I found this today. But what i found most interesting was the day length info. Has anyone breeding with wild tomatoes had to decrease day legnth to get them to flower more? www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-12/cshl-gey_1120216.php |
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Post by walt on Jan 7, 2017 14:42:12 GMT -5
I haven't with LA 0722, an S. pimpinellifolium. It produced well in the long days of summer in Kansas, USA, as well as in the tropics of Niger, 13 degrees north, both summer and"winter". There the longest days were 13 hours and the shortest were 11 hours.
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Post by reed on Jan 8, 2017 10:31:34 GMT -5
I saved a lot, I mean a lot of seed from the pimpinellifolium cross that occurred accidentally in my garden. I originally thought they were from the yellow one because of where the first one came up but after reading some of the links sounds more likely it was the red one.
Not sure what generation they are but now suspect the original cross must have happened before I even became curious about it. There were half a dozen or more phenyotypes this year and I just saved them all mixed up, wish I hadn't done that now cause if I was to go on with them I would want to focus on the larger ones. I guess I'll plant another crowded patch this year and then pick out my favorites to keep going.
They are all very sweet and taste about the same. They all look just like the pimps except for range of fruit size, shape and color. Anyway, I have thousands of seeds if anyone wants some.
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