Joseph's Tomato Experiments

[joseph]

Originally Posted by ilex

Are there genes for broken anther cone? I've seen cones open were they meet the petals. Is that fairly common?

Uncommonly, I see flowers (consistent within a plant) with:

Anthers not connected to each other at all.
Anthers not connected near the stem.
Anthers not connected near the tip (as shown in the recent photo).
Anthers leaving a wide-diameter opening around the stigma.

[joseph]

Originally Posted by joseph

F1: [WXO x Sun4X]

I found a photo of the flower of the mother of the above plant...

WXO

I believe I've read that exerted stigmas are a trait if parthenocarpic plants, and pollination is still possible even after the fruit has been developing, in this case (the stigmas continue to live longer than usual after the fruit begins to develop, which is seedless if it doesn't get pollinated). I don't believe most known parthenocarpic tomatoes would be well-adapted to an arid climate, since most of them have been bred in western Oregon, but I think it's good to consider. I'm experimenting with adapting Oroma and Legend to our semi-arid climate, but this is the first year (Legend seemed more adapted on a foliar level).

I don't know how often non-parthenocarpic tomatoes exert their stigmas.

I haven't checked my parthenocarpic tomatoes for exerted stigmas, yet. I can take a look.

I checked. It looks like all the flowers have been pollinated, as they all seem to be in the process of producing fruit! I guess they like the late season here most the first year (even though it's still semi-arid at this time, fortunately), which makes sense. They didn't produce much fruit earlier. These are shaded plants, though. Oroma has been doing much better in the shade. There are no stigmas on the fruit. It's possible they don't get exerted stigmas, but they could have just been pollinated. The stigmas of parthenocarpic plants are supposed to shrivel after sufficient pollination, I believe. I need to check my plants in full sun, still.

[joseph]

The last of the tomatoes from my frost-tolerance breeding project finally froze last night. So about 10 weeks after other tomatoes started getting damaged by frost. I'm very pleased with this year's progress on the project.

[PhilaGardener]

Amazing! Did the parent species outlast the hybrids?

[joseph]

The domestic tomatoes that survived the longest have complicated and mysterious parentage because they came out of the promiscuous pollination project. My best guess is that they are recently descended (4 to 6 generations) from wild species.

One plant each from S. habrochaites, and S. peruvianum looked perfectly healthy the day before they were finally frozen. Those same two plants were also frost and snow tolerant in the spring.

[loulac]

Originally Posted by joseph

The last of the tomatoes from my frost-tolerance breeding project finally froze last night.

A 10-week deferment of frost is quite impressive.
Will you keep the seeds of these tomatoes and sow them till they are completely stabilized or will you go on hybridating the flowers of their suspected parents ? Gardeners living in cold places (latitude/ altitude) follow your work closely.

[joseph]

Loulac: Stabilizing varieties isn't on my list of things to do. I'll leave that work for people that value stabilization. I'm selecting for genetics that are reliably frost tolerant, but I don't care what size, shape, or color the fruits are. My long-term goal with tomatoes is to grab the self-incompatibility trait out of the wild tomatoes, so that every plant will be a new hybrid with every generation.

[Jimbotomateo]

Joseph, how many winter months do you have and do you keep greenhouse going throughout? Apologies if you've addressed this previously.

[joseph]

We typically have frost from the first of September to the end of May, so 9 months per year. I don't try to keep the greenhouse warm during the winter, but it stays warm enough to keep tomatoes alive for about 10 weeks longer in the spring and fall. I add a bit of heat during extra cold nights in spring and fall.

I'm currently growing a couple dozen tomato plants in a bedroom window.

[Jimbotomateo]

So your saying 3 month window for growing harvesting and taking awesome veggies to market! Brilliant!!

[Jimbotomateo]

Went thru Utah one morning my pard says stop here for breakfast it looks like everybody in town is eating here! Mid seventies. Small town high altitude. Overheard farmers talking about how they had 6 to 8 wks to grow and mow before bad weather set in. Believe it was alfalfa etc.. remarkable! Had great breakfast consisting of ham fried taters , homemade biscuits and gravy . 2 dollars and fifty cents. The half inch thick ham barely fit on separate large plate. Lol.

[joseph]

I have a 3 month growing window for tomatoes, squash, and beans.

I typically have 4 to 5 months of snowcover. The rest of the time I can grow cold hardy crops like kale, spinach, and lettuce.

[joseph]

Today I came home from a trip to find fruit ripening from one of the crosses in the promiscuous pollination project. Between them, the ancestors of these plants had 3 genes for orange fruits, and one for pink. Therefore when fully ripened, expected ratio of yellow:pink is 1:1:

I used blue tape to mark plants with exerted stigmas. I also attempted pollination of these fruits with F1:[Domestic tomatoes X LA1777]. There are a number of traits that will make some successful crosses obvious: huge flower petals, black fruits, hairy fruits, habrochaites leaf type, striped fruits, green/white fruits.

I'm intending to let them ripen a few more days before harvesting and immediately planting the seeds. It would be nice to get F2 plants before spring.

F1: [WXO x [Sun4 X Pink]] (A triple-cross hybrid)

[Jimbotomateo]

Awesome. One to one ratio pretty cool. Anything in particular your hoping for? When you plant seeds straight away do dry them first or what's your process exactly? Jimbo.