PPP x PP "C"

[fortyonenorth]

Does anyone know what, if anything, became of this cross? I noticed it on Tania's site, but the notes there seem to all be several years old. Curious if it died on the vine (pardon the pun) or evolved into a distributed variety.

Rich

[Suze]

I've been listing it in the yearbook (with Denise's permission) for the last couple of years. In the 2010 yearbook, there were two listers for this variety - IL LO N and myself. I'm up to either F6 or F7 with it at this point.

[TZ-OH6]

I got it in a trade last year and grew it (F5 I think). Its a very good and very pretty tomato. Mine were a bit smaller and better shaped than the pics at Tatianas.

[fortyonenorth]

Thanks for the feedback. It looks like a very nice tomato. Is it relatively stable at this point?

[Tania]

It is very much alive - unfortunately I am out of seed at the moment, and will need to regrow it in the future.

It is a very good tomato indeed.

Tania

[TZ-OH6]

Is it stable? I would have to say No and it never will be. It was traded out well before the completely stable F7 generation so each person that has it can have a unique gene pool, and since home gardeners are not generally selecting for specific traits when they save seeds, what little bit of variation was in the original release is probably still out there.

But then again it depends on your definition of stability. Will it be a mid size to large black, potatoleaf and taste good? Yes. Will they all have exactly the same production, size, and shape the way they would if selected all the way to F7? I doubt it.

[Tormato]

I may still have some F3 seed of PPP x PP "A", "B", and "C". I'll look for it over the weekend.

Gary

[travis]

I think we need to differenciate in this case between stability of a line coming out of this cross and standardization of PPPxPP"C" as a variety.

I'd say that if you got F7 seeds from Suze for PPPxPP"C" that line is probably stable or pretty close to it.

However, if you got F7 seeds for PPPxPP"C" from another person who also has been growing his or her line out for several generations, the likelihood is that this second PPPxPP"C" F7 will vary a bit from (not be standard with) Suze's F7 line.

But both F7 lines may themselves be stable separately from each other and separately from the issue of a standardized variety.

[TZ-OH6]

There may or may not be increased stability due to genetic drift (planting of relatively few seeds picked at random), but I would argue that there has been very little active selection, which would stabilize the line much faster. F7 is the fastest that the desired level of stabilization can be reached under intense selection.

To actively/systematically stabilize a line you would have to grow several plants and select one plant to preserve the traits of the parent plant through comparison. I doubt that many seed savers do that. They grow a couple of plants minimum and as long as the plants seem to be what they are supposed to be, seeds are saved from all of them, thus preserving the genetic variability. If I threw out all of the extra seeds I got in trade and just saved seeds from one of the plants I did grow, my line would be more stable, but I saved seed from both plants and will go back and plant any of the original seeds next year to use them up, so I can't really say that my F6 seed is any better (more stable) than the F5 seed I obtained.

If Suze saved seed from only one plant each in generations F3, F4, F5, F6, F7, then her's is pretty well stable at F7. If she she saved seed from three very similar plants in F4, and kept growing plants from that mixed seed for the next three generations, then her F7 seed could at the minimum be only as stable as the combined three F4 plants.


It probably doesn't matter too much for this cross because it is inbred to start with [OP x PP]xPP so what little variation that shows up past the selection of the "C" line might be hard to notice (i.e. it was "practically" stable when it was sent out even if not theoreticaly stable).

[PNW_D]

Here are brief notes from my original grow out

“A” approx GDD: 1460
4.5 oz./130 g. last to ripen, not a heavy producer
Nice tomatoes, but not quite the heavy weight as “C”, slightly less flavour
But my notes from Sept. 11 say “yum” and Sept. 9 – softer, more mellow vague sweetness

“B” approx. GDD: 1300
6.5 oz./180 g. first to ripen, good production
Much sweeter than “C”, good but less balanced flavoured
More 2006 Notes: mildly sweet, very juicy clear skin (Aug. 21)

“C” approx. GDD: 1460
10.5 oz./300 g. one ripened mid August, then nothing until today, not a heavy producer, but good size
Really nice texture and complex, deep, sweet/tart flavour; meaty and juicy

And a pic - well worth checking out all three - I may have a few seeds left from 2006 if anyone is really interested in growing these out ...

[dice]

I think you can save seeds from multiple different F2, F3,
or F4 plants together, as long as at some point you reduce
the selection to only saving from one plant. If I grow, say,
8 F3s, and I save seeds from 3 of them with excellent,
if slightly different, flavors, and different productivities,
then my F4 plants from those seeds are going to be quite
mixed. But any one of those F4s could be what I am looking
for, regardless of which F3 parent it came from, and it might
be the only one at that generation that I save seeds from.
Or there might be another 3 excellent F4 plants, each of which
could have grown from F3 seeds of any of the 3 parent lines
that I saved seeds from. So I save seeds from all 3 of the good
F4s, together. Then my F5 plants are going to be from
a few different lines of selection, too.

At that F5 generation, though, I am probably going to pick one
best plant to save seeds from, and its parentage is going to be
whatever it would have been if I had only saved seeds from the
1 F2 that produced the 1 F3 that produced the 1 F4 that
produced that F5 plant (if cross-pollination by bees at
any of those steps did not happen). I am simply testing less
parallel possible selections from the same parent plant at each
generation in my fixed number of 8 plants than I would have
been if I only had saved seeds from one plant at each of F2, F3,
and F4 generations.

In a given F4 year, out of 8 plants I might have 2 plants from
seeds of 1 F3, 2 plants from seeds of a 2nd F3, and 4 plants
from seeds of a third F3 plant, instead of 8 plants from any
one of those. If in some year I only save seeds from one plant,
then the progress toward stability of that line is the same as if
I had only been growing that one line all along. I have simply
tested less of the possibilities of seeds from each of its parent,
grandparent, and great-grand-parent plants than I would have
if I had only saved seeds from 1 F2, 1 F3, and 1 F4 plant.

How well that works, whether you have to go back to your
F2, F3, or F4 seeds and test other genetic combinations in
those seeds to get something that you consider worth
stabilizing, is basically luck, unless you can grow rows
of a thousand F? plants or similar.

I had 15 F4s of a basket cherry project this year and 3 last year
from a mix of seeds from 2 F3 plants that had nearly identical
flavors, and none of the F4s measured up to the taste of the
best F3s. I did save F5 seeds from the best one, and I will grow
out some F5 plants just to see what happens, but I expect to still
need to go back to the F3 seeds to find an F4 plant with flavor
that has the quality of the F3 plants that I saved those seeds
from originally before I get the flavor that I want to stabilize in
an OP.

I only grew 7 F3s to find those two with great flavor, but I have
now grown 18 of the F4s and 3 F5s from last year's best F4
without tasting it again.

When you have mutliple people doing this from the same batch
of F2 seeds, though, TZ-OH6 is right that what each selects
is going to be a little different in each generation, so whatever
they eventually stabilize should have different names than what
the name of the F2 was, and a different name for each person's
stable OP (with seeds saved from only one plant at F5, F6,
and/or F7).

[travis]

I guess I'm defining stability differently, TZ.

To me the germplasm is 50% along it's way to stability at F2 because it's 50% heterozygotous and 50% homozygotous. At F3 the germplasm is 25% heterozygotous and 75% homozygotous. At F6 the germplasm is 3.125% heterozygotous, and at F7 it's only 1.56% heterozygotous and over 98% homozygotous are darn near fully stable.

Yes, if each person growing out PPPxPP"C" who got their seeds back when it was F2 or F3 annually made single plant selections from which to save seed, then each grower has his own stable line at F7.

But my point is that I would consider each single plant selection line to be stable but not standard except by the most remote coincidence.

However, I do have a problem with your premise that one should select each generation to a standard set by the original F1. That would negate a whole lot of very unique and wonderful varieties we now enjoy that were selected from quite diverse expressions that recombined in the F2 or F3 siblings from crosses made similarly to how PPPxPP began. For example, Dora, Bear Creek, Gary'O Sena and Liz Bert, all of which are diverse sibling lines from an original cross of Brandywine and Cherokee Purple and not all of which mirror the F1.

[nctomatoman]

It all depends upon the goal - replicating as exactly as possible what was discovered in the F2, or trying to stabilize as many interesting things as you can. With the Brandywine X Tad cross that yielded Little Lucky and Lucky Cross, it is only the tip of the iceberg - last year I named two others that I would like to stabilize - Large Lucky Red and Caitlin's Lucky Stripe...then there is Little Lucky Heart, and Striped Sweetheart.

In the Dwarf project, with Sneezy, we will end up having about 8-10 newly stable OPs from that one cross of Golden Dwarf champion and Green Giant - all very distinctly different.

[Tormato]

I found my stash of "A", "B", and "C" faster than I thought it would take. Searching through hundreds and hundreds of varieties is easy when one looks for Denise's blue envelopes. I have about a dozen seeds of each. PM me for them.

Gary