Making Lemonade?

crmauch · September 5, 2019

(i.e. if life hand you lemons...)

As some may remember, I've been interested in breeding a good tasting high beta-carotene paste tomato. What I thought would be my most interesting breeding line turned out a bit differently...

The cross was originally 97L97XOpalka, and the F1 was pretty much as expected. But my F2 was very different - They were all grape sized. I did a sort of 'mass' selection of seeds of 5 of the 8 plants (they were all very similar) I grew out 8 plants of the F3 this year. Here is a sample of what I got:

97L97xOpalkaF3.jpg

I saved the seed from the plant 3 as I felt it had the best flavor.

So I thought "Maybe a high beta grape wouldn't be too bad, the plants are healthy (no BER). My one concern at this point is it sets well, but only has about 5-6 fruit per cluster. is this enough for a cherry/grape type tomato?

September 5, 2019	#1
crmauch Tomatovillian™ Join Date: May 2013 Location: Honey Brook, PA Zone 6b Posts: 399	Making Lemonade? (i.e. if life hand you lemons...) As some may remember, I've been interested in breeding a good tasting high beta-carotene paste tomato. What I thought would be my most interesting breeding line turned out a bit differently... The cross was originally 97L97XOpalka, and the F1 was pretty much as expected. But my F2 was very different - They were all grape sized. I did a sort of 'mass' selection of seeds of 5 of the 8 plants (they were all very similar) I grew out 8 plants of the F3 this year. Here is a sample of what I got: 97L97xOpalkaF3.jpg I saved the seed from the plant 3 as I felt it had the best flavor. So I thought "Maybe a high beta grape wouldn't be too bad, the plants are healthy (no BER). My one concern at this point is it sets well, but only has about 5-6 fruit per cluster. is this enough for a cherry/grape type tomato?