Save Seed from BER Tomato?

[Redbaron]

Originally Posted by Tania

I never saves seeds from a tomato with BER. Not because I believe you shouldn't - just because I almost never have BER on any of the varieties I grow. (And by now, I think I grew over 1500 varieties)

Not sure what it is that I 'do right', but BER does not bother my tomatoes, even the ones grown in smaller containers.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that it will continue this way!

Same here. Never had it.

[joseph]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Joseph, BER is not caused by a genetic defect. Variety X can have BER one year and next year not.

it's all about stresses to the plants early in the season.

I consider the inability to handle stress well to be a genetic defect, especially when it leads to BER. It is clear to me that some families of tomatoes routinely produce BER. It's like BER is a genetic marker for those clades of tomatoes. My strategy regarding BER is simple: If a plant suffers from BER at any time during its life then it is chopped out immediately, and its children are not allowed to grow in my garden. I really don't have the patience, money, or time to coddle genetically weak plants. If a tomato can't produce non-rotten fruit in my garden under varying conditions from year-to-year, then it doesn't belong in my garden. It's easier to modify my tomato genome by selecting for non-predisposed genes than it is to modify my soil, climate, irrigation, or practices.

I might have a different philosophy if every tomato I ever grew had BER. But since only certain families produce rotten fruit, it is easy to call those families genetically defective for my garden.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by joseph

I consider the inability to handle stress well to be a genetic defect, especially when it leads to BER. It is clear to me that some families of tomatoes routinely produce BER. It's like BER is a genetic marker for those clades of tomatoes. My strategy regarding BER is simple: If a plant suffers from BER at any time during its life then it is chopped out immediately, and its children are not allowed to grow in my garden. I really don't have the patience, money, or time to coddle genetically weak plants. If a tomato can't produce non-rotten fruit in my garden under varying conditions from year-to-year, then it doesn't belong in my garden. It's easier to modify my tomato genome by selecting for non-predisposed genes than it is to modify my soil, climate, irrigation, or practices.

I might have a different philosophy if every tomato I ever grew had BER. But since only certain families produce rotten fruit, it is easy to call those families genetically defective for my garden.

Joseph, I don't want to prolong this much more but what do you mean when you say that
certain families produce rotten fruit viz BER.

You keep saying that you believe that BER is a genetic disease, but there are no such genes.

The inability to handle stress is not genetically determined.

As I said above, variety X can have BER fruits one year and the same variety the next year it will have none. Or persons growing X in one part of the country or another can have BER when others do not.

And plants that do have BER fruits can be of ALL types, det, indet, PL. RL, and are not puny spindly plants that you seem to feel are genetically defective.

If you go to the Rick Center at UC Davis website and do a search for genes associated with BER I doubt you'll find any at all/

At least give me a B+ for trying to help/

Carolyn

[joseph]

Carolyn: I value your contribution to this forum, and enjoy corresponding with you. I am delighted to read your posts and definitely assign an A rating to them.

I am holistic in how I view my plants. Mendelian genetics has not been very helpful to me as a farmer and plant breeder. I believe that is because there are tens of thousands of genes in every species, and each gene has an influence over every other gene. And there are epigenetic and organelle factors that are also inherited.

[Warning: Technical jargon alert!!!] I am certain that if a meticulous QTL analysis was done on tomatoes, that certain loci would be found that contribute some percentage each to the rate at which certain tomato families manifest BER. And the families that I am calling genetically weak have a higher percentage of those influences stacked up one on top of another. For example, in my garden, BER pretty much only occurs in paste/roma tomatoes, and especially among those that have a pointy tip. I suspect that the pasty trait, and the pointy tip would show up in a QTL analyis as being more likely to produce BER. Perhaps there are other traits that contribute such as nutrient uptake by the roots, or shape/size of the veins, etc.

So when I write about a plant being genetically weak (in regards to BER), I am considering the entire system. As far as I can tell, the ability to handle stress is a multi-gene effect. It is not driven by a single gene, but by a multitude of genes working together or against each other.

The Dixon Springs Agricultural Center reports that (averaged over many growing seasons) that certain cultivars are more susceptible to BER than others. That can only be due to genetics. They might not know if a particular gene is responsible, but statistically, certain cultivars are genetically less resistant to BER. I choose to not grow varieties that are susceptible in my garden.

The Rick Center at UC Davis lists 1248 genes. I think that the number of genes in the tomato genome is around 35,000, so only about 4% of the tomato genes have been named and included in the Rick Center's list of tomato genes.

Here's QTL studies I found that document certain genes being associated with BER:

Round fruit allele of fs8.1 is associated with reduced incidence of blossom-end rot in tomato fruit "... most round fruit showed reduced incidence of blossom-end rot (BER) compared to the elongated fruit..."

Tolerance to salt stress and blossom-end rot in an introgression line, IL8-3, of tomato "... tolerance to blossom-end rot was found to be present as a dominant trait..."

Dynamic Alternations in Cellular and Molecular Components during Blossom-End Rot Development in Tomatoes Expressing sCAX1, a Constitutively Active Ca2+/H+ Antiporter from Arabidopsis "The results indicate that the high expression of the sCAX1 gene reduces ... leading to BER symptom development in the fruit tissue."

What if a particular cultivar contained the form of all three of these genes that is associated with increased BER? I would certainly call that a genetically weak plant (in regards to BER).

[joseph]

Today I did the weekly evaluation of a patch of trial tomatoes. I was horrified to see one plant with blossom-end-rot. [BER is very rare in my garden.] I will allow it to finish out this growing season, because the trial is being done in cooperation with another grower, but I am treating it as if it had died. It will not be used in any crosses. Seed will not be saved from it. Whatever genetic sub-components that it carries within it that makes it more susceptible to BER than the rest of the tomatoes won't be permitted to reproduce in my garden.

[AKmark]

I would look for a plant of the same variety that does not have the BER problem, maybe it is more tolerant to the problem that is affecting others of like. Survival of the fittest.

[Worth1]

Worth

[joseph]

I figure that for the rest of my life I'll be discussing how genetics and BER are related to each other. It seems like an important topic to be discussing in a forum devoted to tomatoes, and especially in a thread devoted to BER in which one of the most prolifically-posting and widely-respected moderators on the forum claims that "there are no such genes".

Blossom-end-rot used to be common in my garden. Today it is so rare and unusual that the novelty of it was occasion for a post, especially in light of the recent discussions on this forum. The reason BER is rare for me today is because I grow genetically diverse tomatoes, and I save and replant seeds only from plants that don't suffer from BER.

I think that it is important for people to know that there are genetic reasons for the existence of BER, and that they do not have to tolerate susceptible tomatoes year after year when it is so trivial to select for a more resistant genome.

[crmauch]

Here's a question regarding BER and tomatoes (I didn't follow all your links provided). You noted that you feel that BER is more associated with pasta types which I agree from my more limited experience. And I'd also say that I don't think I've ever seen a cherry tomato with BER (not saying it's not possible, just very unlikely).

Now, personally, though I grow cherries and have learned to enjoy them*, I the meatier a tomato, the more I like it. If the price is the same I always buy the pasta type for my salads rather than the regular slicers as IMO they're too seedy. [Heck if I could grow a meaty cherry, I'd be a happy man]. So I like the pastas and some of the beefsteaks (as they generally have small locules/seed compartments.)

My question is this (I know if took forever to get here). Is selecting against BER, are you possibly selecting for more seediness or less meatiness?

* (I should note as a child I loathed tomatoes (liked ketchup, pasta/spaghetti sauce (as long as it wasn't 'chunky')), and found my first appreciation was the store tomatoes over home ones (I know this is an anethama to say this).

[joseph]

To me a tomato is a tomato. I make juice out of them and cook the sauce down until it is as thick as I like. The cooking is part of the joy of canning tomatoes.

Due to my short growing season, I can't grow tomatoes like Brandywines and Beefsteaks that are renowned for their meatiness. I'd think it really clever if I could grow a Hillbilly.

I think that it is more the shape of the fruit than the size of the seed cavity that pre-disposes to BER. It seems more common in cylindrical fruits with a pointy tip than in round fruits. Most of my tomatoes have ended up being round (to select against BER) and weighing around 6 to 8 ounces (to ripen in the short growing season). So the oxhearts and Romas are not with me much any more.

One of my tomatoes is very meaty with few seeds. It dehydrates on the vine without spoiling. It's never had BER. That's the thing about these multi-gene traits. It's so hard to observe simple Mendelian segregation and use it to make predictions. I end up throwing hundreds of genetically diverse plants into the ground and watching to see what survives, without much guidance from gene maps.

[crmauch]

Originally Posted by joseph

To me a tomato is a tomato. I make juice out of them and cook the sauce down until it is as thick as I like. The cooking is part of the joy of canning tomatoes....

Well, I like them for fresh eating AND I want to make pasta sauce. I enjoy cooking, but there's a certain point I just want it DONE. Guess I need to study more Zen...

Originally Posted by joseph

One of my tomatoes is very meaty with few seeds. It dehydrates on the vine without spoiling. It's never had BER...

Do you or have you made seeds of that tomato available or plan to? Sound very interesting.

It also sound like you could take your approach, and evaluate cylindrical/pointy types, and selectively select the population so that variety has less tendency toward BER. Maybe first grow multiple vars of those types to see if any have less tendency towards BER, and then grow larger amounts of plants of the selected variety, eliminating any plants that have BER. Over time I would think a variety could be made less susceptible (but perhaps not eliminate it). Just posted this as a thought experiment.

[joseph]

I don't keep tomato varieties separate, and I needed my transplant growing space for a different project this spring, so I didn't sow very much of the landrace that contains the dry-on-the-vine tomato. (And then about 50% of the plants I did plant got killed by frost.) I've shared plenty of seed that contains that family, but someone would have to grow out perhaps 50-100 plants to find the pasty one.

If there are 20 genes that influence BER, and you get most of the anti-BER genes into one plant, they might (partially) counteract the fruit-shape gene(s) that pre-dispose towards BER. I won't be doing that project, because I am highly pragmatic: Most important thing to me is an abundant harvest on vigorous problem-free plants. I have eliminated the BER problem in my tomato genome (in my growing conditions), so I won't be intentionally reintroducing it so that I can work to eliminate it again.

[zeroma]

Joseph,

What are the varieties you grow?

[joseph]

I grow landrace tomatoes... Over the years I have planted around 500 varieties of tomatoes, and then I only save seeds from those that thrive in my garden. I select for flowers that are attractive to bumble bees, and that have open flowers and extended stigmas so that they have great cross pollination potential. I grow other plants to attract and nourish the bumble bees. So they are segregating hybrids, and promiscuously pollinated tomatoes, etc... Today there were two species of bumblebees working the tomato patch.

There are cherry tomatoes, and paste tomatoes, and slicing tomatoes. Fruits of the slicing tomatoes are generally 8 ounces or smaller. Larger tomatoes don't ripen in my short growing season. I don't separate the seed at harvest. All the different kinds get thrown together into the same fermentation bucket and seed packet. [I keep the two earliest varieties separate, so that I can plant them in a slightly warmer micro-climate. First of season tomatoes are that important to me, but the main season eating/canning/slicing tomatoes can be anything.]

[matilda'skid]

I think it is very interesting that you a developing tomatoes that grow in your conditions. I don't have your climate but I admire what you are doing. I think the Oklahoma and Texas, Western Kansas people could do what you do and benefit. I think you don't put up with BER because for you those tomatoes don't redeem themselves later in your short season. I put up with the big juicy black ones rotting so easily because I still get plenty for me and I love them. If I were making them all into canned tomatoes I wouldn't put up with that.