Breeding for Pastes

[crmauch]

Some of you know I am trying to breed a paste/processing tomato with high beta-carotene. The resulting tomato (if I succeed) will be orange (since there are several pathways to orange tomatoes, I'm only breeding red/pink tomatoes to high beta tomatoes).

The parents are the following:
Paste tomatoes:
Opalka*, Shannon, Heidi

High beta tomatoes:
97L97, CaroRich, Jaune Flamee

**Goals: To breed a high beta delicious processing/paste tomato that is also good for fresh eating

Plan:
All paste types crossed w/ each of the high betas
and the reciprocal cross of each high beta w/ each paste type

what has seemed to take thus far (I have a number of crosses that I'm still waiting to see if they're a 'take'):

Opalka x Jaune Flamee:
Cross_1_OpXJF.jpg

Shannon x 97L97:
Cross_2_Shx97L.jpg

CaroRich x Opalka:
Cross_3_CRxOP.jpg

Jaune Flamee X Shannon
Cross_4_JFxSh.jpg

Jaune Flamee x Opalka:
Cross_5_JFxOP.jpg

My concern now of course is that now that I've counted my chickens before they've hatched that an animal or something else will prevent me from collecting these before they ripen.


*on this forum someone said that Opalka was too 'wet' to be a good paste tomato which is the first I've heard that. Elsewhere, I've heard the opinion ventured that they are just as happy to use beefsteak types as their sauce base.

**Note: I have a secondary goal of breeding a high crimson paste variety which this year I have Tasti-Lee F3.

[joseph]

Originally Posted by crmauch

I've heard the opinion ventured that they are just as happy to use beefsteak types as their sauce base.

I do not like to use beefsteak types for making sauce/paste because they are large fruits and require chopping before they work well with my paste making equipment. It doesn't bother me at all to use watery tomatoes for making sauce or paste. I just boil it down until it's the consistency that I want.

[Tormato]

If Dar knows his tomatoes, which I believe he does, then Brokenbar's Costoluto Genovese would be my starting point if I were to breed a paste.

[gssgarden]

Or this one!

[drew51]

As one whom is interested in making sauce, I'm more into blending. No one tomato is going to have all the complexity in taste I want. Red is the only acceptable color. Most people will be turned off if not red, so one start's with a deficient. Anyway I would be willing to add other colors in blending, but end result will be a red sauce. I'm growing Amana Orange this year. interesting color. hardy any seeds, all meat, has a nice acid taste, yet some sweetness in there. I need more to ripen to decide, but seems a good one to experiment for my sauces. Good flavor, solid interior. I don't care if wet or dry as mentioned by others. Taste is what is the determining factor for me.
I'll probably never have a final sauce as too many tomatoes to try, I'll need decades, and don't have decades left. It's fun growing new tomatoes (new to me), and I will always do so. The standards like San Marzano and Costoluto Genovese will be the base of my sauce always, but I may change them to say Costoluto Fiorentino or Constoluto di parma most certainly will be at least tried down the road.
This year I'm trying Mrs. Maxwell's Big Italian , Amish Paste, and Rosso Sicilian.
Rosso had curled leaves and still has some, seems always in distress, but is absolutely loaded with tomatoes, more than any other sauce type. Impressive potential yield.
Maxwell seems super hardy and easy to grow. Amish paste seems like a typical paste tomato in growth habit, wispy leaves etc. I have many pastes I want to try.
I grew Amana Orange for other purposes, but it is so meaty it's going in the sauce, a very nice color too. It should lighten any blend up nice!

[Whwoz]

Thanks for the replies folks, some interesting thoughts there. I know I still have some thinking to do as regards what I actually want in a paste tomato. Colour is important, more so in the sense that I intend to use it to get apparent variety into a diet that is restricted in diversity due to food intolerances, so not worried about others opinons of what I end up with. Some interesting varieties listed but some of these are not avialable down under and with our current quarrentine regs, are not likely to become so.

Lots of thinking still to do. Keep the prompt coming please.

Woz

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by PNW_D

Wonder why no one has mentioned Speckled Roman as a good starting point - a very yummy paste and cooks down to a rich sauce (if memory serves)

and in reading an unrelated recent post Aunt Gertie's gold was mentioned - brought back memories - fabulous taste but very low production in my experience - this could be a wonderful combination - no?

Because Speckled Roman is too good to be a paste.

Worth

[brokenbar]

Romeo X Costoluto Genovese or Russo Sicilian Togeta. Chinese X One of the Costoluto's (Genovese, Fiorentino or Parma)

Federle X Russo Sicilian. While Russo Sicilian has more moisture and seeds than I want, NOTHING out produces this tomato and in all weather and crummy seasons. Also, it has a better flavor than Costoluto IMO. And apologies, but sauce is red, period. Even in the sun dried tomato business, absolutely no market for dried tomatoes other than red or a few of the blacks. Yellow sauce, pink sauce, green sauce, orange sauce...not sauce...

Sauce tomatoes MUST be dry (very little moisture or gel fraction). Cooking alters the taste of sauce as it creates a chemical change. The longer you have to "reduce" it to get it thick, the worse the changes distinguishable in the finished products flavor. Start out thick, not much cooking needed. Many of the sauce tomatoes taste like crappola fresh. Cooking changes their flavor making them tastier in sauce.

Size is also an important consideration (at least to me.) Small-ish tomatoes are too much work for the product you eventually get. Romeo is the hugest paste tomato I have ever seen and it is Sahara-like dry, about 15 seeds or less to a 1-2 lbs tomato and it has a decent flavor, even fresh. Negatives, late. But...even ripened "off the vine" flavor remains good.
Federle has the best taste raw and cooked but it is really late, even in Mexico. A runner up for production to Russo Sicilian Togeta. Chinese and Cow's Tit are tied for overall production, taste cooked, dryness and hardiness and are stellar tomatoes for drying. And "bah" on determinates...plants too small, paste tomato size is affected negatively and it takes way too many plants to get the number of tomatoes one needs if making large batches of sauce to can. It is ALWAYS about production, no matter what you do with tomatoes you grow for whatever purpose. I routinely process 300 to 500 lbs of tomatoes for sauce...sounds like a lot but take away the seeds, skins, moisture and you lose about 1/4 of that weight. Cook it at all and you lose another quarter. So now three hundred pounds is 150 lbs and a quart of tomato sauce weighs 2lbs (without the jar...) so you would get 75 quarts or just under 19 gallons...not so much when you started out with 300 pounds of tomatoes. It's even worse when you are growing tomatoes exclusively for drying...300 lbs becomes about 30 lbs of finished product (you lose 65-to 85 percent of weight in the drying process.)

But my sauce is Costoluto Genovese only. Nothing compares. A superior sauce tomato grown for generations for sauce and only sauce. Everything a sauce tomato should be. Over 35 years, I have probably grown well over a hundred and fifty varieties of sauce-type tomatoes (including hearts...) Those listed above are all I grow for sauce and drying (with drying being my preeminent
purpose.) Wyoming was a tough growing environment and these varieties took whatever the weather threw at them. It's easier in Mexico because just about any tomato grows well here.

Now if you want a "magic" cross, lets talk Tomatillo X Cotoluto Genovese...Tomatillos are tomatoes on crack. Nothing gets in their way. Will produce enormous crops in all weather and thrive on neglect...They grow like one of those old Disney movies where they show a plant growing from seed, getting big and having flowers in about 2 minutes. I swear to God you can watch tomatillos grow if you look hard enough. And as they get nothing but sweeter as they ripen, that should satisfy those who want a sweet sauce. (ugh)

Sauce and drying...only things RED tomatoes were ever grown for...how many BLTS can a person eat (or should they be eating what with the unhealthy, nitrate-laden, salt-saturated bacon and all...)

[Fusion_power]

Size is also an important consideration (at least to me.)

Not sure I want to comment about this one. There is way too much innuendo attached.

Mary, we can't cross tomato with tomatillo. The genetic distance is too far. We can cross with some wild tomato species with similar effects. You should grow an S. Peruvianum sometime and see what it is like to have a tomato with roots so tenacious that it is nearly impossible to pull them apart from a cell plug. As for improving sweetness, that too is highly viable now that we have access to high sugar genetics. It is a long term breeding objective that would take at least 10 years to achieve the desired result.

[brokenbar]

It was a joke... But I wish I could! Dang Tomatillos are the Ninjas of the vegetable world.

I personally don't think sauce should be sweet but a lot of people do. Sauce in Italy is very piquant and never sweet. I would be happiest with ultra dry, few seeds, big (above 1 lb) with taste improvement after cooking and texture, which is something I have not mentioned but great sauce from sauce tomatoes has a specific "pebbly" appearance...never smooth. It always looks a little grainy (hard to describe but about the size of bee bees .) If you compare sauces made from different tomato types, IE: hearts, cherries, slicers, the sauces will each have a distinctly different texture. Some of the texture results from long cooking times and IMO that is the biggest difference in using paste tomatoes over non-paste types for sauce. I have said many times on this forum that Costoluto Genovese comes through the tomato mill looking like finished sauce.

I understand about breeding for specific traits. Cattle and horses pose the same difficulties, mainly because when you breed specifically for one trait, another trait you already have goes to helll...so many genetic variables and in animals specifically, there may be an unexpressed, recessive gene ( trait ) that pops up after a gazillion generations...always a crap shoot. It is most obvious in "line breeding". You get the best of the best traits but you also get the worst of the worst traits. So it could run like the wind but all four legs are so crooked it can only walk in a circle...

[travis]

Joseph has pointed out some important ideas in his earlier post.

Since your intent is to produce large batches of tomato sauce, salsa, or paste, BER is a critical issue with regard to paste tomatoes, as is having a full load of fruit all at once. So, I would think you'd want highly productive, fully determinate plants with BER resistant fruit.

This summer, I grew out some F2 seeds from a large fruited, beefsteak hybrid type recently developed in Florida. The F1 plant was a compact indeterminate with a bountiful crop of large red tomatoes with an heirloom appearance and good flavor.

To my surprise, one of my plants is a completely determinate, short stake type with "tall round" red fruit with pointed blossom ends. The tomatoes are modest size, heavy walled fruit with little gel or seeds. Most surprisingly, the flavor is better than the F1 beefsteak fruit from which the seeds came.

The tomatoes on this plant are ripening all at the same time, and there has been absolutely no BER, weather check, radial or concentric cracks, zipper drag, catfacing, irregularities, or blemishes of any sort.

What is not surprising is that the breeder apparently used a tomato with the "n" (nipple) gene to accomplish a tight or pinpoint blossom scar, as many professional breeders do this with their large and jumbo fresh market hybrids.

So, point is, maybe you can explore the use of F2 seeds from modern hybrids to find new lines of "paste" tomatoes with determinate growth habit and BER resistance.

Originally Posted by joseph

Blossom End Rot seems to afflict paste tomatoes at a high rate... If I were to attempt to breed a new paste tomato I would make sure that one of the parents was a variety that is known to rarely if ever get BER. If there are 5 or 10 or 30 genes that contribute to better resistance to BER then perhaps some of them would inadvertently get included into the new paste tomato. We might not know the names and modes of actions of all the contributing genes, but we can observe in general which plants are more resistant.

Cylindrical fruits tend to get BER more than round fruits, so I'd select towards a round paste tomato. Pointy tips on fruits tends towards BER so I'd select against that trait as well.

One time I grew a tomato that had air inside instead of gel. It was a very dry tomato. It seems like that would make a great paste tomato. A tomato doesn't have to look like the archetypical Roma in order to be a wonderful as a paste tomato.

I prefer paste tomatoes to be determinate. Because I use them primarily to make sauce I want the whole harvest ripen at the same time so I can do one big batch of sauce instead of lots of little ones.

I would select against catfacing because that makes peeling tomatoes problematic for those recipes that call for peeled tomatoes.

I prefer about 4 ounce fruits because they work better with my sauce making equipment than larger fruits.

[Minnesota Mato]

Is there a reason no one ever mentions hearts? They are very meaty and some quite tastey. Is there something bad about using them in breading paste tomatoes?
craig

[drew51]

Mary,

Thanks for the input. Thanks to you I am growing Costoluto Genovese this year, and probably every year. My dentist though swears by San Marzano, but he never had Costoluto Genovese.
You probably saved me ten years of frustration. I'll stick with Costoluto Genovese. I will grow others for fun for sure.

[Whwoz]

Originally Posted by gssgarden

Or this one!

gssgarden, what Variety and is that its final colour or are they more orf a red?

[swamper]

Development of flavors is influenced by climate. With all respect to Brokenbar, Costoluto Genovese has been mealy and flavorless when fresh here in New England. When cooked it improves as all deep red colored tomatoes do, but the flavor cant match others which are similar to San Marzano. I trust in her climate, Costoluto Genovese is superior.

Similarly, tomatillos are a vector for septoria here, agreed they taste delicious, especially the smaller pineapple types.

Minnesota Mato: is the a specific variety of heart you recommend that is bursting with flavor and deep in color? One of the best I've tried is Sochulak, but it doesn't match my favorite paste for density or flavor, fresh or cooked. These are the sauce types I'm trying this year:

manny
kosovo
santa maria
premio
margherita
Rinaldo
Rosiyiv Flamingo
L'Espagnol Lefebvres
mr fumarole
Dominick's Paste
mary's best
Piennolo de Vesuvio
ten fingers naples
vilms paste
costoluto genovese

I recall having a very good crop from San Remo years back but they all dropped from the plant when ripe, which was a little irritating, as I prefer vine ripening.

I once had an heirloom paste called Dad's Barber which was delicious fresh; I dont recall the source, nor can I locate it.