Klee tomato flavor work

[Fusion_power]

If you do a search for "Klee tomato taste", you will find several articles about ongoing work to breed flavor into commercial tomatoes using heirloom varieties as genetic sources.

http://hos.ufl.edu/kleeweb/

There are several links on the homepage that are worth looking through. Several other links will show up in a google search that give some detail to the work that is being done.

I took a look at the varieties they are growing and just shook my head. Most of them are seriously limited for flavor. An email to Harry Klee got a response that he would love to have some other varieties to trial. Here is what I sent. Note that several of these are selected for other useful traits besides just flavor.

1884
Bear Creek
Black Krim Cherry
Brandywine (Sudduth strain)
Cherokee Jumbo
Clackamas Blueberry
Crnkovic Yugoslavian
Daniels
Eva Purple Ball
Goose Creek
Green Giant
J.D.'s Special C-Tex
KBX
Kosovo
Lucky Cross
Lynnwood
Nepal
Neves Azorean Red
Perth Pride
Picardy
Piennolo del Vesuvio
Polish
Rose de Berne
Strawberry Margarita
Stump of the World
Yoders German Yellow

I also included a pack of R.G. Bold Red and R.G. Bold Green with information to test them for late blight tolerance.

DarJones

[carolyn137]

Darrel, don't you think that Klee already knows about Randy Gardners work where he's been using some heirloom varieties as part of the parentage of several varieties?

And I see that you sent him two of Randy's anyway.


It was many years ago when I first knew got to know Randy and it was a suggestion of Tom Zitter who is at Cornell and who said that the only two folks he knew who were working on Early Blight tolerance were Randy and himself. At the time Randy wanted to use some heirloom varieties to breed with and I sent him MANY different varieties, but at the time he said that what he got was far too soft to be marketable.

This was back in the 90's and at the time the Cornell Coop Ext Director for my area had asked if she could use varieties in my tomato field to assess foliage infections and any others. It was she who referred me to Tom when I had that problem that I ended up calling the CRUD.

So it's only been in the last, what, 5-10 years that he's gone back to using some heirloom varieties again.

Mr. Stripey has been part of the parentage of many, and I told him I cringe when I hear about that bicolor. For IMO there are far better tasting and performing bicolors than that one.