Whiskeyjack F2 - Canada 150

[bower]

This was my best surprise of the 2017 season.
From a cross of two F2's in 2015, red and orange-red, I selected a very tasty red plum in the F1 2016 to grow forward. I had completely forgotten the lone gf allele from Indian Stripe in one of the original crosses. So imagine my shock when the earliest flower opened with all the characteristics of a black. Sure enough, the plant ripened a black heart, just 93 days from seed.

[bower]

Coincidentally to giving the name "Whiskeyjack" to this line, I learned that a cross Canada vote organized by Canadian Geographic had chosen the Whiskeyjack to be Canada's national bird. It isn't official (but may be some day), but it got me thinking about Canada's 150 celebration, and the Canadian roots of my new tomato, whose earliness comes from the maternal DNA of Kimberley. I thought wouldn't it be cool to celebrate Canada's anniversary by sharing the F3 seed across Canada, so the tomato could be locally adapted across our nation just as the Whiskeyjack bird is. If we end up with more than one stable OP "Whiskeyjack" they could be distinguished by adding the grower's name or place. And of course, anyone is welcome to use this line for your own breeding work to create other varieties.

So this thread will begin by sharing information with my fellow Whiskeyjack growers about the lineage and what to expect in segregation, and is also a place for anyone to post their results down the line.
What is really special about the Whiskeyjack to me? It's one of, if not the earliest fruit I've ever grown. It's larger than any of the other early blacks I've been working on. And the fruit was very sweet, as well as being smooth textured and thin skinned. My taste testers rated it above the other blacks this year, every time.
Here's a pic of Whiskeyjack with some of my other early blacks for size comparison. The first fruit weighed 125 g, so about a quarter pound.

[bower]

The yield of the plant was also decent, with 4-6 fruit per cluster and large enough to meet my benchmark of a pound per cluster.
Some weights from my notebook give a range of 66 g to 189 g.
I didn't prune and let the plant ramble on the hopes of more fruit, of course! Some fruit that were close to the glass (and temperature extremes there) unfortunately split, so this is one tendency to watch out for in future. There is no significant tendency to splitting in the parent lines that I have noticed.

[bower]

In the past couple of seasons I've been giving more thought to the maternal DNA lineages in my crosses, due to reading some work that suggested earliness (and some other important traits) were more easily recovered if the trait was maternal. My own results may tend to agree with this, as I seem to have lost Kimberley's earliness when I crossed the same line to Medovaya Kaplya (MK mother) which was easy to recover in the original cross with Zolotye Kupola.

It is especially easy to select earliness from the Kimberley lines, because much of it comes from the genetics of precocious flowering. As you can see in the table below, Kimberley and her early offspring flower much earlier than the typical tomato, at around 45 days. This means you can identify the trait at planting time, and it is worthwhile to grow some extra seedlings every generation just to make sure the earliness is recovered - if it matters to you. It does for us, because we have such a short season.

[bower]

I guess I should mention the recessive traits which are listed in the last column, and could still show up in F3.

Yellow, if still present, would produce a green-when-ripe. I think this is unlikely because I didn't see any yellow in later generations of Hope's Early, but it's still possible it was present in the F2.

Semi-determinate is quite unlikely, because it is linked to the Beta orange gene. I selected away from that when I chose the Winter Plum F1 (no Beta).

PL is certainly possible, maybe most likely of all, since there were PL siblings of Whiskeyjack F2, which is RL wispy. I selected RL-wispy seedlings in the F2, because I am not a big fan of wispy PL. Why because it makes it more difficult to identify a problem when the leaves are curly and droopy anyway. I'm always thinking the plant looks like hell when they are perfectly happy, as I learned from growing the mother line "Hope's Early". Some find it pretty, and I guess at its best it can look a bit like curly hair 'ringlets'. But wispy-RL at least in these lines looks a bit more robust for my liking. Here's a pic of two Hope's Early plants to give you an idea of that wispy PL foliage "look".

[bower]

Well I have to go to work now, so will post more later about shape, size, taste etc.
I am expecting lots of shape variation into F3 and beyond, because this is what I'm seeing in parent and sibling lines.

The Whiskeyjack F2 could be described as a blunt heart with a strong tendency to produce doubles. I regret I didn't get a pic of some that looked truly valentine heart shaped, there were a few. For now here's a pic of a juicy double sliced, and a shot of the two sibling shapes - Robins Nest top left and Winter Plum, which was most like the mother F1, bottom left.

[clkeiper]

it is a beautiful color. how does it taste?

[bower]

Originally Posted by clkeiper

it is a beautiful color. how does it taste?

They were really sweet.
From what I've read about tomato taste, sweetness also brings out other flavors. Maybe this is why I only like sweet fruit now, as I've gotten a bit jaded with tomato taste.

I always get some tasters in to give a verdict. The Whiskeyjack scored every time.

The other two F2 fruits that I grew were each very different tasting. The large red I called Robins Nest has a classic red tomato taste with lots of umami and a very tangy finish. The smaller one Winter Plum didn't produce many fruit but they were really outstanding - sweet and very complex. I think they were better tasting than Whiskeyjack, although I usually pick blacks over reds... go figure.

[KarenO]

Great name. . Will be fun to watch your project unfold. Looks like a beautiful tomato
Bower
KarenO

[sirtanon]

I'm looking forward to hearing more about this project. Looks quite interesting, and sounds like flavor is a winner too. Also, I love the color on those dark hearts.

[bower]

I'm off to an early start this year, planning to put my plants through the cold tolerance rigors again. From past experience it will add about 10 days to the DTM, but I will still get earlier fruit and a better set because the plants are well adapted to set in the cool spring conditions.

I have six seeds of Whiskeyjack F3 planted, and the seeds are looping up this morning, looks like Whiskeyjack will be first to shuck the seed. That is them in the back left corner, lined up with other early black competition.

Although I only have two spaces allocated for full size Whiskeyjack plants, I'm starting with six seedlings because past experience says that is enough in most cases, to show the recessive traits onboard. Precocious flowering appears to be a recessive part of earliness, so I want to make sure that I keep the earliest one(s). Simple recessives like PL are likely to show up too if present - I don't want to select PL, but it's useful to know if that gene is still lurking in this generation.

I haven't fully decided how to handle the extras, in order to see what's there in shape segregation and possibly taste as well. I may use small containers, or I may do a multi - pot, and prune them hard to get just a couple of clusters of fruit - enough to taste and save seeds if there's a reason.

[bower]

Just potted up my Whiskeyjack F3 at 2 weeks from germination. At this point I can tell they are all RL, although some leaf shape variations - zero PL out of six seedlings. Possibly the RL trait is already fixed in this line.
Seedlings #5 and #6 had trouble shucking off the seed, so they're a good bit smaller at this stage. The real differences will show up later..

[Labradors2]

Good to see the WJ babies Bower .

I sowed 4 Whiskeyjack seeds yesterday (along with all my other tomatoes). They will get the cold treatment when I grow them in our 50 degree basement under the lights! I will let you know if I get any PL's.

Linda

[bower]

Yayy! Spring is coming...

[bower]

So here is how my Whiskeyjack F3's are looking at 6 weeks. There is quite a bit of variation in height, and also in earliness as measured by the size and maturity of flower buds at 42 days. These are lined up left to right from the most to the least mature buds. As you can see it is not a 1:1 relationship with height. To be fair to the stragglers, plants 6 and 5 on the far right were also 2 days later to germinate and I damaged the cotyledons a bit when removing the unshucked 'helmet'.
Plant 3 has the biggest bud, plant 4 is also well ahead and looks to have a larger cluster.
The tallest #1 is 3rd in bud readiness, and showing #2 and #6 still unfurling the less mature buds.