Renaming heirloom tomatoes? - Page 2

dice · February 12, 2012

There are different kinds of growouts of saved seeds from commercial
F1 hybrids.

One person may try to reproduce the traits of the original in a stable OP.
The whole point is to have a cultivar that you can save seeds from and
still get the traits that distinguished the original F1 as worth growing.
In that case calling it "Original Name OP" is reasonable, that tells quite
a bit about it: what kind of tomato and plant habit to expect and that it
has been grown out to at least near open-pollenated genetic stability.
If someone wants to prefix it with their name or nickname to distinguish
it from other people's open-pollenated versions grown out from the same
F1, that seems fine to me.

Another grower may not care about reproducing the original as closely
as possible, only that it survives some plant disease that is chronic in
their garden and has good production or good flavor or both. Each year,
that grower simply selects whichever plant was "the best" by their own
standards to save seeds from, not particularly caring if the size or shape
or flavor or plant habit or whatever are different from the original. An
entirely new name seems preferable in that case, because calling it
"Original Name OP" would be misleading to people growing it.

The one thing it is not in either case is simply "Original Name", the original
F1 (though there may be exceptions even there, where what a vendor
called an F1 was not really an F1 anymore, because it had been grown
out to stability already by the vendor just to save on production cost).

dice · February 12, 2012

PS: Both Persimmon and Russian Persimmon, the two persimmon tomatoes
that I know about, are OP already. (It would be interesting to see how
Penny's Persimmon compares to those.)

janezee · February 12, 2012

Thank you, dice, for giving a very succinct explication of the situation that I thought I understood from all my reading, but had not seen it put in specific words.

j

travis · February 15, 2012

I'm put off that Penny's Tomatoes is showing a picture of a genetically engineered tomato and representing it to be a picture of her Chocolate Cherry tomato, seeds for which she is selling.

February 12, 2012	#16
dice Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: PNW Posts: 4,743	There are different kinds of growouts of saved seeds from commercial F1 hybrids. One person may try to reproduce the traits of the original in a stable OP. The whole point is to have a cultivar that you can save seeds from and still get the traits that distinguished the original F1 as worth growing. In that case calling it "Original Name OP" is reasonable, that tells quite a bit about it: what kind of tomato and plant habit to expect and that it has been grown out to at least near open-pollenated genetic stability. If someone wants to prefix it with their name or nickname to distinguish it from other people's open-pollenated versions grown out from the same F1, that seems fine to me. Another grower may not care about reproducing the original as closely as possible, only that it survives some plant disease that is chronic in their garden and has good production or good flavor or both. Each year, that grower simply selects whichever plant was "the best" by their own standards to save seeds from, not particularly caring if the size or shape or flavor or plant habit or whatever are different from the original. An entirely new name seems preferable in that case, because calling it "Original Name OP" would be misleading to people growing it. The one thing it is not in either case is simply "Original Name", the original F1 (though there may be exceptions even there, where what a vendor called an F1 was not really an F1 anymore, because it had been grown out to stability already by the vendor just to save on production cost). __________________ -- alias

February 12, 2012	#17
dice Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2007 Location: PNW Posts: 4,743	PS: Both Persimmon and Russian Persimmon, the two persimmon tomatoes that I know about, are OP already. (It would be interesting to see how Penny's Persimmon compares to those.) __________________ -- alias

February 12, 2012	#18
janezee Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Dec 2011 Location: Whidbey Island, WA Zone 7, Sunset 5 Posts: 931	Thank you, dice, for giving a very succinct explication of the situation that I thought I understood from all my reading, but had not seen it put in specific words. j

February 15, 2012	#19
travis Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Evansville, IN Posts: 2,984	I'm put off that Penny's Tomatoes is showing a picture of a genetically engineered tomato and representing it to be a picture of her Chocolate Cherry tomato, seeds for which she is selling.