Seed saving - what can go wrong

[Tania]

Reading 'Not Creole' thread by Carol inspired me to start this thread.

I have been actively saving tomato seeds since 2003, and recently I have been doing that for many varieties and offering the seeds via SSE and Tatiana's TOMATObase, so I thought I'd share both my thoughts and my experience on 'what can go wrong' with seed saving and lead to mixups. Most of this is more applicable to situations when many tomato varieties are processed at the same time, and will not apply to folks saving a few, but I am sure this will be an interesting read for many folks.

I am not going to cover the most obvious reason - seed crossing, and will only address the possibilities for other seed mixups.

So here you go - some of the reasons for off-types are (some 'examples' may be exaggerated a bit, just to make a point):

1. Wrong seed planted - could be 1 plant out of many, or all plants. It get's tricky when the varieties were similar enough, so even 1 wrong plant may not 'stand out' enough to spot the problem. Once I have seen myself accidentally dropping a seed into a wrong cell and not being able to find it. I had to discard half of the tray. What if I did not notice that happened?
2. Plants accidentally mislabelled or labels switched. Imagine your father-in-law helping to bring the plants outside each morning and accidentally dropping a tray or pulling out a few labels and then sticking them back in, as he is *sure* he is putting them right back where they were. He usually does not tell you about the accident, as he knows how much you love your tomatoes and does not want to upset you.
3. Wrong plants transplanted - imagine yourself digging holes and getting a tray of tomato seedlings ready to transplant, pulling the labels just before putting plants into the holes... then someone distracts you...
4. Someone helping you around the garden accidentally pulls labels while weeding around tomato plants. Or little kids do it because they want to help you. This usually not a problem when you grow many plants of the same variety, but still, weird things happen...
5. Harvest mixups: You are hauling the harvest by buckets and boxes, carefully labeling each fruit or putting each variety into its designated container. Well... lots of things can happen here, both at the beginning of the harvest and towards the end:
   • With few ripe fruits, we may put them into the same box. Well, sometimes you cannot read your own scribbling later - or, it got erased or smudged accidentally when you put the fruit into the box.
   • Accidentally putting a wrong fruit into a wrong bucket or box when you are picking multiple varieties - just because that box was closer to you, or you were distracted by someone. Easy to do with similar-looking fruits!
   • Someone is helping you to bring the boxes back home, dropping one accidentally on the way and not reporting the incident. Anything can happen here, depending on how you label the fruits when picking.
   • If you grow different (but similar) varieties too close to each other and are lucky to get a 'tomato jungle' - there is always an opportunity to pick a fruit from a wrong plant, thinking it is a right one!
   • At the end of the season, while picking fruits that are not fully ripe, it gets even easier to mix them up, as they look very similar...
   • Hey, I even had a few episodes of 'false memories' - when all of the sudden I'd stop and ask myself whether I put the last fruit into the right box or bucket! What do I do with the fruit in question? Discard is the only safe option, if you question yourself.
6. Mixups while extracting seeds:
   • if you are poking seeds from the best fruits with a knife and want to eat the fruit, and do that with many varieties in one shot - a wrong seed may stick to a knife and get into a wrong fermentation cup. It may stick to your hand, or the cutting board
   • Some folks stir the fermenting seeds periodically - if you use the same stirring stick, a seed may stick to it and find its way into the next cup.
   • Hey, I even seen a seed 'jumping' into a different seed plate when I was carefully spreading wet seeds on another plate! Same can happen when you are getting the dried seeds off the plates - these jump around even better than wet ones.
7. Mixups while packing seeds:
   • a stray seed left on the packing table gets mixed with the next variety you pack
   • a stray seed sticks to your hand, gets under nails, or gets caught in your sleeves... and gets carries into the next batch

What's the conclusion?

• If one is not careful during all these stages, seed mixups may be much more likely reason for off-types than crossed seed.
  
• It is good to always keep in mind where mixups can potentially occur, so you can watch these steps more carefully and minimize the errors. Or, you can change the way you do things to reduce probability of the errors.
  
• it is probably unreasonable to expect that no mixups would happen, even if you are very very careful - there could be still some human error happening occasionally - especially when you have helpers that are less experienced. Therefore, it is important for folks to always check each variety they grow for 'correctness' - and if it is not correct, do not pass it around, at least not under the same name!

Please share your observations/thought/suggestions to improve!

Tania