Tomato pollination question

[mathfed]

I am getting myself confused about the way tomatoes pollinate. To my understanding, blossoms on a tomato get pollinated individually. From that pollination, an individual tomato will develop from an individual blossom (disregarding weather effects, etc). Will all seeds in that tomato be the same genetically? For example, if a blossom gets crossed, will all seeds in the resulting tomato be the same cross? Or, is there variability in each seed in the crossed tomato?

[feldon30]

As long as the blossom pollinates without the help of a pollinating insect (a bee, sweat bee, ants, etc.), then the seeds will be genetically identical to the plant.

If a cross-pollination occurs, than the fruit will look the same as all the others, but the seeds will produce an F1 hybrid.

[mathfed]

If there is a cross pollination, will all of the seeds in the resulting tomato be the same? The seeds will be an F1, but will plants grown from those seeds all be the same? (i.e., will the F1 variant be the same for all seeds resulting from the cross?)

[feldon30]

In incomplete cross-pollination, it is possible that some seeds will be identical to the parent, and some will be crossed.

Are you TRYING to cross-pollinate? I am not understanding what you are trying to accomplish.

If you cross two tomato plants, the F1 should always be the same. This is the foundation of the hybrid seed industry.

[mathfed]

Originally Posted by feldon30

In incomplete cross-pollination, it is possible that some seeds will be identical to the parent, and some will be crossed.

Are you TRYING to cross-pollinate? I am not understanding what you are trying to accomplish.

If you cross two tomato plants, the F1 should always be the same. This is the foundation of the hybrid seed industry.

I'm not trying to cross-pollinate. I was just trying to get a better understanding of how it worked. Thanks!

[sirtanon]

I could be wrong, but I think the question might have been meant to get information along these lines:

If a bee visits one of my tomato flowers and cross-pollinates it, will the resulting seed saved from that fruit all produce the same plant?

mathfed can correct me if I'm wrong here..

Now, as I understand it, the answer is basically this:

If the bee that visited your tomato flower had only visited one other tomato plant of another variety, and had enough pollen on it from that other plant to fully pollinate your flower, then yes, that fruit will contain identical F1 seed - HOWEVER - IF it had on it pollen from MORE than one other tomato variety, and if that pollen was intermingled enough, then it's entirely POSSIBLE your fruit would contain many DIFFERENT types of F1 seeds.


Aren't insect pollinators FUN?

[carolyn137]

An additional comment.

If all of the ovules in the tomato ovary have been self fertilized, then no X pollination can occur.

However if some of those ovules have NOT been fertilized by self pollen then the unfertilized ovules can be X pollinated.

So an individual fruit can have all correct self pollenized seeds or a fruit can have some self pollenized seeds and some hybrid F1 seeds, from one or more pollen sources, from any X pollination that occurred.

[mathfed]

Originally Posted by sirtanon

I could be wrong, but I think the question might have been meant to get information along these lines:

If a bee visits one of my tomato flowers and cross-pollinates it, will the resulting seed saved from that fruit all produce the same plant?

mathfed can correct me if I'm wrong here..

Yep, that is what I was trying to figure out. For some reason, it is interesting to me that one could save seeds from one tomato and potentially get lots of different plant types depending on the pollination.

(Also, thanks for your additional clarification above, Carolyn.)

[Worth1]

If all of the pollen is of the same plant then all of the seeds will be the same, if the blossom is pollinated from several different plants then it is a tossup as to what seeds will be crossed with what.

Such as when a mama cat has 9 kittens from 9 different toms (it has happened) the kittens will only be half brothers and sisters.
The mama will still be a Tabby the babies will be half Tabby and half what ever the daddy is.
Some folks cross pollinate tomatoes all of the time, I myself have never done it so they would know more about the technique than me.

Worth

[celticman]

The actual way tomato's are pollenated is fascinating. I think Craig answered the most import aspect this question and it answer raises in an earlier thread. To collect seed which is genetically pure collect the first ripe fruit before the bee's get busy. And or bag the flowers, which is a lot of work. If you want to cross two tom's do so deliberately otherwise the results are folks have made clear very unpredictable. .
Celtic

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by celticman

The actual way tomato's are pollenated is fascinating. I think Craig answered the most import aspect this question and it answer raises in an earlier thread. To collect seed which is genetically pure collect the first ripe fruit before the bee's get busy. And or bag the flowers, which is a lot of work. If you want to cross two tom's do so deliberately otherwise the results are folks have made clear very unpredictable. .
Celtic

Craig and I have gone back and forth on this for many years, but I find that bee activity where I live is NOT early in the season, therefore I save seed only from later fruits.

I think each person needs to find out for themselves by trial and error when the best time to use fruits is, with the least probablility of getting crossed seeds.

Bagging blossoms is certainly one way to go to prevent X pollination, neither Craig nor I have done that in the past.

Craig has grown his plants quite close together and finds that self pollenization has worked pretty darn well for him.

In the past I've relied on minimal geographic isolation and that's worked well for me.

I've listed maybe 500 or more varieties in the SSE Yearbooks in the past, maybe more, I never counted, , and I can remember only about 10 that were cross pollinated.

If there's even ONE X pollinated seed in one fruit and one processes 10 fruits for seed, as I often did and often even more than 10, it takes a long time and lots of growouts of lots of folks to find that in a larger sense the seeds had been X pollinated.

I also think what one does is quite dependent on how many plants a person grows each season. The summer of 2004 was the last time I was physically able to grow lots, and I normally would be growing from 500-1000 plants/season and there's no way I'm going to bag blossoms for that many plants since most of those plants would be used for seed for my SSE listings in the past or getting new seed stock just for myself.

So I use only fruits from later in the season for the same reason that Craig uses fruits from only early in the season.

[feldon30]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

I find that bee activity where I live is NOT early in the season, therefore I save seed only from later fruits.

..........................

[carolyn137]

And why are you so shocked Morgan?

I've been doing what I've been doing since I first started growing OP heirlooms back in the early 80's after I moved back East, and it's the best way for me to go, trust me on that.

Where do you think the insects go if you think they're around only in the early part of the season? Do they hibernate the rest of the year? Do they go on a trip to Texas?

We who live in the tundra have cukes and melons and squash that all set fruit from July onwards up to frost, so we in the tundra KNOW that insect pollinators are around late in the season.

[garnetmoth]

Ive already seen bees and wasps around here.

Ive got 2 adoreable unoccupied toille bags, one pretty big (3x8", and one about 3") and Id think it a shame not to use them.... a third is my "teabag" for compost tea.

If ive only got 2-4 plants of each type, and im not growing a "block" of any of them, I dont know if id be wasting my time to bag or not....?

[feldon30]

You do NOT have bee activity early.
You save seeds from LATER fruit.

I guess I am misreading.