Tomato named "Blueberry"

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by linzelu100

It is possible to breed a good tasting blue tomato, right? In Carolyn's book it talks about crossing tomatoes to get the traits you want. This can be done with blues right? They wouldn't be any different. I have never done this, but certainly someone probably is with a blue tomato, right? Are they just so new that there hasn't been enough time to do so?

Lindsey

Yes, there's a veryshort section in my book about doing directed crosses to hopefully get what you might like as well as short discussions of making selections from F1 hybrids whether from directed corsses or accidental crosses or from known F1 hybrids,

But it isn't as simple as that.

One can cross two varieties with excellent taste, get the F1, save F2 seeds, and from those seeds get some lousy tasting fruits.

It's all about genetic segregation and here's an excellent link where how to make crosses, illustrations of what genetic segregation is about, how long it takes to dehybridize a hybrid and so much more:

http://www.kdcomm.net/~tomato/

You can start by clicking on Culturee but there's hours of
interesting material at that site as well as links to many other sites.

Eventually somone will come up with a good tasting blue, but if you ever tasted the initial OSU Blue and the P20 selection from that I think you'd realize that neither is good tasting, so trying to find the right other varieties to cross with is difficult.

I could make a list here of the many folks I know who are working with the blues, and they know what they're doing, but I think it's always good to remember that Dr.Myer's impetus in developing OSU originally was as, one might say a dietary supplement,and NOT a novelty variety to be grown as such.

Carolyn

[Iochroma]

Tom Wagner has a variety bred from OSU lines called 'Clackamas Blueberry'

[Tormato]

Would anyone know if there is any work being done on a blue stuffer type?

I wouldn't care what such a tomato tasted like, just the stuffing.

Gary

[Tom Wagner]

Would anyone know if there is any work being done on a blue stuffer type?

Yes, I have the breeding work with blues and various hollow/stuffer types. It will be a while before I have a prototype I would release. The trick will be to select for a thin wall tomato with a large cavity to show off the blue dipping down into the pericarp which will probably never reach the cell wall next to the seed. But I can always hope for a blue 'shadow' to give the fruit a haunted look. I have to decide on the first prototype...blue on yellow, blue on white, blue on bicolor, blue on red, blue on green, blue on black, blue on gold. If I could apply a good stuffer tomato to a photoshop maker...maybe I could moronimate this color contrast concept for some of you!

Tom Wagner has a variety bred from OSU lines called 'Clackamas Blueberry'

That I do...but when I named the CLACKAMAS BLUEBERRY tomato variety...I knew there was a BLUEBERRY tomato with that name. I have a plant of that name also from a collection I bought this year for breeding purposes. Don't ask me what I crossed it with...there are 625 string tags in the field and I can't remember what I crossed it to.

Often times I can tell what is in a variety more from its progeny than I can by looking at the variety by itself. That experience came mostly from potato breeding work. Therefore, I am hoping to 'solve' the mystery of what it is.
Pffff.....

[carolyn137]

I knew there was a BLUEBERRY tomato with that name

$$$$$

Tom, there never was a variety named Blueberry asI explained above in a post.

THe one developed in England WAS called blueberry by others,not the developers, b'c it was thought that the gene inserted was from blueberries.

But as I notrd above it was from a snapdragon, so what they had was a GMO. I never heard anything more about it or what it was finally named by the breeder(s), if it ever was.

Hope that helps,

Carolyn

[Tom Wagner]

Tom, there never was a variety named Blueberry

Begging to differ.
The plant I have with the label Blueberry is from a friend who buys odd varieties of tomatoes each year. So it is a "variety" by default. I will find out where she bought the seed. My suspicions were that someone just gave the OSU Blue a name and with a name it gained gravitas. Five to six years ago, the OSU Blue selections were getting scattered all over the world, and I even picked up fruit of them during my work shops in Europe four years ago for display purposes only.

In early 2011, I Googled the name Blueberry and tomato in a search and knew then that I could not use a name already in some measure of usage. When I needed a name for a backcross selection selfing out of
OSU Blue x 55 3-22-09 (Experimental x OSU Blue)
the segregating clone was given the name Clackamas Blueberry to give honor to the Oregon origin of the original OSU Blue.

Tatiana has a blurb about Blueberry

Likely a renamed version of OSU Blue. When the OSU Blue tomato 'escaped' the OSU labs, it was not entirely stable, and some growers decided to give segregations different names. I believe this is one of the segregations that has been stabilized and named by a US gardener.

Tomato named "Blueberry" is the topic name. I am trying to stick to the topic. If and when the hybrids I made with "Blueberry" get extracted...they will go into growouts for the F-2 seed and analyzed again. It doesn't matter to me if it ever maintains the moniker "Blueberry"..... it may just be another phenotypic clone involved in complicated pedigrees. My associate in Hawaii wants any and all of the blues I had that predate the release of Indigo Rose to compare and I could easily send a "Blueberry" in the mix.

I am hoping for F-1 hybrid seed of a
Helsing ★★★★★★★★ Blue x Blueberry
and
Helsing ★★★★★★★★ Blue x Indigo Rose.

I could then apply a Venn diagram analysis to compare what is similar and different. This kind of experiment would give credence to Blueberry being a highly related clone to Indigo Rose if the similarities outweigh the dissimilarities.

[carolyn137]

It does get complicated,, doesn't it Tom.

I'm going to throw up a few links, for the following reasons.

First, I was present at DG when the woman from Dr.Myers lab was distributing his OSU Blue seeds and said no one told her she couldn't, but she never asked.

The link from here indicates that Jeannine,who is from the UK, was getting something from Holland that was different from her OSU.

They also show that I at first thought the English one was a GMO with a blueberry gene inserted making it a GMO, but was corrected to show that it was a GMO due to a snapdragon gene that was inserted.


In the GW thread Keith M, who was perhaps the first to get seeds from Dr.Myers,goes through the lineages.

And Finally,from a thread dated 2013 it says the English one, apparently not yet named, will be released in three years.

From bits andpieces here and there, just as seeds escaped from Dr. Myer's lab, it appears that seeds escaped from the breeder(s) working on the English one and some turned up in Europe, Jeannine, mentions Holland for her source.

http://eatdrinkbetter.com/2013/05/24...purple-tomato/

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=19565

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/l...351425370.html

And yes I know what Tania wrote about Blueberry.

Summary?

Who really knows what something called Blueberry really is since originally quite a few folks mistakenly thought that was the English one, yet to be released.

Is it worth debating? Probably not.

What's in a name applies wonderfully to this, IMO confused naming situation.

Carolyn

[travis]

It's really very simple to me. About 2010, maybe 2009, after "OSU-Blue" had made the rounds of the various active tomato boards of that time, a woman up in the Pacific Northwest grew out a line that made deep purple, large cherry fruit with a distinctly pointed blossom end. She decided to dub her seed line "Blueberry," and began distributing it under that name.

About the same time, there were photographs circulating of an unreleased, genetically engineered, high anthocyanin cherry tomato from Europe that also acquired the nickname "Blueberry." Coincidentally, you could see this GMO "Blueberry tomato" pictured for quite some time, even recently, at Penny's tomato sales page used as a photograph for an open pollinated, purple cherry variety. I think it was Black Cherry or Chocolate Cherry, or some other common variety.

[Jayc]

I think it possible there are two varieties going by the name of Blueberry.
One being the GMO English bred variety, not yet released.

The other 'Blueberry' seems to have been shared in Europe, although I'm not clear where it came from, perhaps originating in the U.S.?

I grew Blueberry (not the unreleased GMO one) in 2010, alongside OSU Blue. It was similar in appearance to OSU Blue, though fruiting was a little earlier and fruit smaller than OSU. Also Blueberry generally did better here than OSU. I think it likely Jeannine from Carolyn's link http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=19565 and I grew the same 'Blueberry' tomato. I've no history to my seeds other than they were from a swap, again the source could have been from the Netherlands.

Just read your post Travis.

[Tom Wagner]

I got the seed from Tatiana for Blueberry. I'm looking forward to seeing its fruit! -Taryn

That mystery is solved for me. Blueberry is sold as a variety. In my crosses and I am thinking I crossed it to Clackamas Blueberry or Blue Bayou and that would make the seed backcrossed two times making it 7/8 OSU Blue.

[Fusion_power]

Travis is on the money. I know who grew the tomato that is being distributed in the U.S. as "Blueberry" and I know the source for the original seed. It is a line straight out of P20 which was one of the intermediate numbered lines that became Indigo Rose. It varies from P20 in having a slight nipple and being a smaller cherry size fruit.

Jim Myers is working on elongated fruit as well as crosses with sweeter and better flavored varieties. He has bright yellow elongated fruit with deep blue shoulders that tastes pretty good. He has one line that is a slight elongated plum shape with deep blue coloring and exceptional flavor.

There is indeed a variety named Blueberry here in the U.S. It is out of original material developed at OSU. Since it is large cherry size, it tends to color up exceptionally dark.

But to add to the mystery, Tatiana has pictures of "Blueberry" that do not match the original photos I saw 3 years ago. It is likely that there are multiple strains floating around that picked up the same name.

As an aside, I have 3 Clackamas Blueberry plants in my garden this year. Last year, they had the best flavor of the high anthocyanin lines I tasted. I should have ripe fruit on my plants in about a week.

DarJones

[bejustice]

If you put berry, sugar or sweet in a name, the to me the fruit should have a high brix content. It would be great to see average ripe brix content for cherry varieties. Refractometers are inexpensive considering instrumentation other professions require. It would be nice to see breeders and seed companies report these numbers.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by bejustice

If you put berry, sugar or sweet in a name, the to me the fruit should have a high brix content. It would be great to see average ripe brix content for cherry varieties. Refractometers are inexpensive considering instrumentation other professions require. It would be nice to see breeders and seed companies report these numbers.

It would possibly be nice, yes, but I don't see it happenening, for sure for the larger not family owned companies, since they don't grow their own tomatoes.

Not even with the smaller family owned seed companies that so many buy seeds from.

Quite a few years ago a friend in the midwest did measure the Brix content of about 100 different varieties, just for his own personal interest. I remember it well since he sent me the packets with left over seeds/

The problem he found and that I found is that while yes, a higher Brix level is often related to higher soluble sugar content, that's not what one always tastes.

And that's b'c taste is perceptual and personal and even has a human genetic factor involved/

I remember one scientific paper where mass spectroscopy identified over 400 spikes on the graph involved with taste, and no genes involved for practically any of them.

My friend was doing pH values as well, and since I grew out many of the varieties he sent seeds for I couldn't make a good correlation with pH either.

I know what I personally like as to taste, and for me I guess it's just best to leave it that way.

Carolyn

[Whwoz]

Carolyn 137 wrote

My friend was doing pH values as well, and since I grew out many of the varieties he sent seeds for I couldn't make a good correlation with pH either

Carolyn, are you aware if there was much variation in the pH values of the different cultivars? Keep hearing of so-called low acid varities but have yet to see pH values that reflect this.

Woz

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Whwoz

Carolyn 137 wrote




Carolyn, are you aware if there was much variation in the pH values of the different cultivars? Keep hearing of so-called low acid varities but have yet to see pH values that reflect this.

Woz

The PH values tend to cluster together with no real highs or lows.

Yes, there are a VERY few low acid varieties, despite the claims made at some seed sites, but right now I don't have time to Google to find those values. If you want to Google something like tomato pH values that might help, and that b'c I just don't have the time right now to go fetch that data.

Carolyn