Solanum corneliomulleri

[joseph]

Solanum corneliomulleri:

[jmsieglaff]

Interesting looking plant, is this for attempting to cross with tomatoes? It looks rather stout, but it might just be the angle.

[joseph]

My tomatoes are all stout right now. They are growing at night-time temperatures just above freezing, and daytime temperatures not much warmer... I irrigate twice daily with a high pressure hose blasting horizontally at them.

I'm using the wild species to attempt some manual pollinations with domestic tomatoes... I'm also planting a few patches of assorted species of wild tomatoes together, in an Alan Kapuler style grex, in an attempt to mix up the genetics. I may use some of the interspecies crosses for plant breeding later on.

[joseph]

Solanum corneliomulleri. Flowers have a very exerted stigma.

[jmsieglaff]

Nice photo Joseph! Thanks for sharing the different species, it's neat to see the variations.

[joseph]

The stigma is exerted a long time before pollen is viable. Therefore, the stigma won't be getting pollinated while the stigma is expanding to exit the anther cone. What a wonderful trait for a promiscuous pollination project.

[Gardeneer]

Looks like an easy target to cross/hybridize .

[FredB]

Originally Posted by Gardeneer

Looks like an easy target to cross/hybridize .

Maybe not. The ones with the big flowers and external stigmas are usually self-incompatible, which means they are very picky about their pollination and will drop their fruit at the least excuse. I've had poor success with S. habrochaites (in the same group as S. corneliomulleri) and no success at all with S. corneliomulleri.

Joseph - Any comments about how the foliage smells? I recall the one specimen of S. corneliomulleri that I grew last year had a distinct acrid smell. S. habrochaites also has a strong smell. I'm not sure how I'd describe it - there doesn't seem to be a good English vocabulary for smells. I know that if I brush against a habrochaites plant I'll carry the smell around for hours. Incidentally, habrochaites seems to be a magnet for whiteflies. My habrochaites plants will be covered with whiteflies when I'll barely find any on my standard tomatoes. I presume the flies like the smell.

Fred

[joseph]

I've been paying attention to the smells of the wild tomatoes. They seem to be variable, even within the same species. I can't really say, "That's the habrochaites smell", or "That's the corneliomulleri smell".

Pollen flow is from the self-incompatible species to the self-compatible species. Next year I expect to try to retrieve self-incompatibility both through selection among the F2, and via back-crossing to the wild species. In any case, selection for facultative-outcrossers seems easily achievable.

[StrongPlant]

Beautiful species,looks really elegant and delicate.The flowers look almost the same as in domestic tomato,and the entire plant reminds me most of hairless-type S.Pimpinellifolium.

[joseph]

This S. corneliomulerri plant survived the early spring frosts, and it is growing well this fall. The domestic tomatoes are mostly dead. The vines of S. corneliomulleri died back, but it is sending lots of new vines up from the base of the plant.

S. corneliomulleri showing fall frost tolerance.

[joseph]

I grew Solanum corneliomulleri in 2017, planting from seeds that were grown on my farm in 2016. The plants were again small plants, that grew moderately, but they set fruit abundantly. I collected a lot of fruit, and thousands of seeds. Yay! Looks like I'm well on the way to growing the species reliably on my farm. If germination is at all decent I expect to share seed in a month or two.

Now what to do with it? Hybridize it with Solanum peruvianum?

[KarenO]

Would increased frost tolerance in a tomato be the goal Joseph?
Not too appetizing?
KarenO

[joseph]

The fruits of S. corneliomulleri are not at all appealing to my taste. Not even when fully ripe. So far, it's been a struggle just to get them to produce fruit/seeds. It seems like that issue is resolved now, so I can start exploring what they might be good for. There is plenty of seed to trail for frost tolerance next spring.

I love the hyper-exerted stigmas in the species, but expect them to be incompatible with domestic tomatoes. So perhaps I can explore crossing them with something that is more compatible with domestic tomatoes.

[joseph]

During the 2018 growing season, I combined all Solanum peruvianum-like plants into a single population, which I am calling Solanum peruvianum complex. I did this, because when I tried to key out plants of each accession, they got classified into a number of different species. Therefore, I'm not going to be maintaining or writing about S corneliomulleri any more, even though the genetics are still in my garden.