Ruffled tomates

[prairiegardens]

Looking through some varieties on TatianaTomatoBase and was struck how some tomatoes showed up as both regular, (smooth shaped), or ruffled, sometimes fairly dramatically. So was wondering why? Is it reflecting something in what or how it was grown or a genetic expression that only sometimes shows up or what was going on there? Figured if anyone knew someone here would. 

[steev]

Different strains of the "same" variety? That would indicate a genetic difference.

[kctomato]

Environment is the likely reason for within a plant variation.

"Strain" differences (differences within a population of plants) are likely from inconsistent selection and/or naming and releasing incompletely stabilized lines.

[keen101 (Biolumo / Andrew B.)]

There are cases where environmental influence is a thing, but in my experience even if the same seed is grown in a widely different climate or the summer conditions are completely different from one year to another in your own garden there is only a little bit of change or expression, not extremely dramatic though.

So though i have very little experience with tomatoes, i suspect that tomatoes cross at a much higher rate than the tomato purists like to admit. IE it is less noticeable when an average red tomato crosses with another average red tomato as the differences could be assumed to be "just environmental influence" and these different strains of the "same" variety are actually vastly genetically different. "vastly genetically different" in this context is a bit of a misnomer though since the domestic tomato genome is very limited as it is and has gone through several bottle-neck selection events. Therefore it is my opinion that these "sometimes fairly dramatically different" tomatoes are actually different tomatoes. Or at least half different. Half siblings if you prefer. Just my two cents though.