Crossed Seed When?

[troad]

Need some help explaining possible crossed seeds.
Last year I grew a Tony's Italian next to a Prudens Purple. I saved seed from the Tony's for this year. This spring I found a regular leafed plant and a potato leafed plant in containers both labeled "Tony's". My question is did I inadvertently mix a seed to get the potato leafed or would it be possible for the F-1 generation to produce both leaf types? Shouldn't it be F-2 before this happens? If it is not an accidently mixed seed then is my original seed crossed thereby resulting in this years plant out actually being a F-2 generation instead of F-1 like I think?

Thanks,
Len

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by troad

Need some help explaining possible crossed seeds.
Last year I grew a Tony's Italian next to a Prudens Purple. I saved seed from the Tony's for this year. This spring I found a regular leafed plant and a potato leafed plant in containers both labeled "Tony's". My question is did I inadvertently mix a seed to get the potato leafed or would it be possible for the F-1 generation to produce both leaf types? Shouldn't it be F-2 before this happens? If it is not an accidently mixed seed then is my original seed crossed thereby resulting in this years plant out actually being a F-2 generation instead of F-1 like I think?

Thanks,
Len

Len, Tony's Italian is RL so if it crosses with anything that's PL the F1 will be RL since PL is recessive to RL leaf form.

Even if the fruits you used to save seed had some self pollenized true seed and some X pollinated seed, all the seed would still be RL b'c, again, PL is recessive to RL.

So I can't see a possible F1 being anything other than RL.

I've grown TI from original USDA seed and listed it in the SSE YEarbook years ago and it was RL, and I checked several Yearbooks and see no one who has listed it as PL.

I offered it in my seed offer here in 2007 and I know Suze grew it out, called it a new fave in her SSE listing. and for her, from my seeds it was RL. I don't know what the source of your seeds was, but you seem to be saying that it was RL when you first grew it as well.

So I don't know what the PL seedling was that you had labelled TI. Did you sow seed for any PL varieties at the same time this past Spring?

Did you grow it out the PL one? If so what did you get?

[troad]

Carolyn,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I thought the F-1 should all be RL but since the PL plant appeared and I thought I was careful in saving seed I wondered if perhaps the plant I originally used to save seed was it self from a crossed seed and the plant was there for an F-1 and my saved seed was possibly an F-2.
As far as other PL seeds this year-LOL- BW Sudduth, OTV Brandywine, Limbaugh Potato Top, a pink Brandywine, KBX (of course this would tell on the color).
The reason I questioned the possible cross was I wondered if I should go back to the original seed and try saving again. Guess that would not be too tough. I liked the Tony's enough to try it again this year. Guess it will be back next year too.
Incidentally the Tony "Error" plant produced a beefsteak that had poor flavor unlike the BW's and unlike the Prudens Purple that I have liked in the past. I did save seed but that probably was a waste of time.

Thanks again

[carolyn137]

I guess I'm a bit confused here.

What was the source of your original seed? From that original seed did you get plants that had plants/fruits that were what they were supposed to be for the variety?

if so and there was no crossing or mutations then your saved seeds from those fruits whould have been correct for the variety.

If there were some crossed seeds in that batch of saved seeds then they would give RL plants.

What am I missing here?

[dice]

What am I missing here?

That the fruit of the PL plant in the container labeled "Tony's"
did not resemble the fruit of any of the PL plants that he
intentionally planted this year (thus not likely a seedling
label mixup), yet the fruit of the Tony's Italian that he saved
seeds from last year seemed to match the description of
Tony's Italian.

If that plant from last year was a chance, bee-made F1, he
would have expected fruit last year that did not quite match
the description for Tony's Italian. Still, that is a possibility,
especially with a cultivar that one has not grown before.
One can get F1 fruit from a bee-made cross very much like
a named OP cultivar that is one of the parents and not see
that it was an F1 until F2 seeds from it are grown out in a
subsequent year.

(How did Spudakee first turn up, for example? Someone did
not notice that one of their Cherokee Purple plants was not
actually Cherokee Purple, because the fruit looked and tasted
very much like the uncrossed CP parent, and then they saved
seeds from what was actually a CP x unknown PL F1 plant in
with their uncrossed Cherokee Purple seeds, discovering the
PL cross when they planted the F2 seeds sometime later,
expecting them all to be Cherokee Purple. That may be what
happened here to produce troad's PL plant from seeds that
should have produced only RL plants, bee-made F1 crosses
from last year among them or not.)

A mutation that affected more than just leaf type is possible,
if not very likely. These things do happen.

What about the soil in the container? If it is not new out of
a bag of container mix, I would suspect a volunteer from some
previous year as a possibility, too, perhaps F1 or F2 if the fruit
was not immediately recognizable.