Plant Selection

seaeagle · June 24, 2015

I read somewhere that any variety of Tomato or anything for that matter could be improved by 10% or more with simple plant selection.After all everyone saves seeds from their best plants.I believe that a lot of these so called strains are just older varieties improved through simple plant selection maybe over many many years.I remember reading an article about the Vinson Watts tomato, and I think that guy worked on improving that tomato for 50 years(doing this from memory so I may be a little off).I hate to use an example but I will anyway.Say some farmer improves a certain tomato variety over 20 or 30 years through simple plant selection, sells it to a nursery, a gardener goes in and buys it and it performs better than what they are used to seeing from that variety. Then you have a new strain, although it is really just the same tomato improved through simple plant selection.Any opinions on this

June 24, 2015	#1
seaeagle Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Oct 2014 Location: virginia Posts: 743	Plant Selection I read somewhere that any variety of Tomato or anything for that matter could be improved by 10% or more with simple plant selection.After all everyone saves seeds from their best plants.I believe that a lot of these so called strains are just older varieties improved through simple plant selection maybe over many many years.I remember reading an article about the Vinson Watts tomato, and I think that guy worked on improving that tomato for 50 years(doing this from memory so I may be a little off).I hate to use an example but I will anyway.Say some farmer improves a certain tomato variety over 20 or 30 years through simple plant selection, sells it to a nursery, a gardener goes in and buys it and it performs better than what they are used to seeing from that variety. Then you have a new strain, although it is really just the same tomato improved through simple plant selection.Any opinions on this Last edited by seaeagle; June 24, 2015 at 02:34 PM.