Breeding for Pastes

[drew51]

It's in the postal system, they'll never find it. I know I once worked for them!
The sauce came out great!

[Tracydr]

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?

I was going to mention Speckled Roman,too. It's a good producer of medium sized dry fruit with beautiful color.Although it's indeterminate and I don't know how you breed for determinate? I would think black tomatoes would make a fine sauce, since I've used Cherokee Purples and they made a beautiful spaghetti sauce or salsa. The plums and even store bought aromas seem to have far too much juice/gel.
I've seen some hearts posted here that look like they would pass the dryness/meatiness test.
Since pink and red are determined by skin color and the skin gets removed when processing it shouldn't make any difference if its a pink tomato.
Great idea for a project! I'm still looking for my sauce/paste/drying tomato and I have most of the same requirements.

[Tracydr]

Originally Posted by 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...)

What she said.

[Tracydr]

Originally Posted by brokenbar

It was a joke...

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...

I've bred horses my entire life and also bred show dogs for awhile. Those darn recessive traits are such a problem. So many of the bad diseases in horses and dogs are recessive. Trying to line breed becomes scary but you almost have to do it if you want to insure the traits that you're breeding for. I bred Labradors for over ten years before I found out that my stud dog and the outcross dam line both contained a recessive gene for blindness. All of a sudden, ten years work went right down the drain.
I do believe that DNA testing will get less expensive with time and we will be able to utilize more for things like plant breeding.

[crazyoldgooseman]

How would you rate San Marzano Redorta? Moisture content flavor etc for sauce? I like it but my seedlings don't do well that wisp foliage in the wind. Almost seems like they get wind burn or dry out? I look forward to Trying Brokenbars Costoluto Genovese this year.

[frogsleap farm]

My work takes me to Davis,CA pretty regularly. There is a high density of processing tomato production in Yolo/Solano County, and I am amazed at the high yield potential and phenomenal plant health of these commercial fields generally. This fall I picked up a tomato off the roadway - unknown processing variety, roadkill from a truck hauling to the canner. It had crimson, very dense flesh and surprisingly good taste. I'm also assuming resistance to TSWV, F1,2,3 and Vw. Crosses to be made to "Old Davis Rd. #2" F2 plants next summer.

[crmauch]

Here are the F1s I have waiting to mature (remember I'm the evil person whose breeding for high beta-carotene ("Orange") paste tomatoes):

97L97 X Heidi:
97L97_X_Heidi.jpg

97L97 X Opalka:
97L97_X_Opalka.jpg

My really only 'double planting this year': 97L97 X Opalka:
97L97_X_Opalka2.jpg

Heidi X Unknown (I know this was a tomato I crossed because it had cut sepals, but the label came off and was lost in a storm) Given the a shape I think it's either Heidi X Jaune Flamee OR Heidi X Tasti-Lee(F4):
Heidi_X_Unknown.jpg

Jaune Flamee X Heidi:
JauneFlamee_X_Heidi.jpg

Jaune Flamee X Opalka:
JauneFlamee_X_Opalka.jpg

Opalka X Jaune Flamee:
Opalka_X_JauneFlamee.jpg

Jaune Flamee X Shannon:
JauneFlamme_X_Shannon.jpg

[joseph]

Originally Posted by swamper

I know that one of my goals with breeding pastes is to incorporate more seedling vigor into my favorite wispy variety. Short of reaching that goal, are there tried and true techniques to assure that wispy varieties reach maturity more quickly?

My earliest producing slicing tomato this year (and last) has wispy foliage. It is determinate which I think may help with earliness. I have been calling it 'fern-like' because since it is determinate it grows more as a bush and less like the wispy-vines that I associate with something like Anna Russian.

I'm growing Roma-type tomatoes this year. They are potato leaved, and the leaves look deformed to me. Perhaps I aughta take photos to share. If it's diseased I might as well cull it sooner rather than later.

[Whwoz]

Looking good Crmauch, very interested in seeing final results.

Woz


[QUOTE=crmauch;491452]Here are the F1s I have waiting to mature (remember I'm the evil person whose breeding for high beta-carotene ("Orange") paste tomatoes):

[Minnesota Mato]

what is the gene that causes the deep ribbing in the costoluto Genovese and are they always flattened fruit?

[bower]

Originally Posted by Minnesota Mato

what is the gene that causes the deep ribbing in the costoluto Genovese and are they always flattened fruit?

MinnMato, there's some info on the shape genetics of CG in the supplementary data tables for this article here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091046/
It says CG has FAS and LC, which I guess is what makes it flat and many-loculed.
As regards the ribbing or ruffling, there's a more recent publication about six genes involved in shape - the two additional ones are also size related, CNR and SlKLUH, which affect shape by increasing the size of different parts of the fruit: CNR enlarges the placenta and columella, while SlKLUH primarily increases septum and pericarp (see Figure 1). But neither of these would explain the bulging caused by locules placed up in the ruffles of CG iirc, it might be FAS or FAS plus a modifier, affecting boundary information... Seems like this is something that hasn't been well defined.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4034497/

The flat ribbed shape is fairly archaic, I mean it is found in some old heirlooms from various parts (Turkey - PI 120256), Purple Calabash etc.

Besides the (complicated? unknown?) genetic modifiers of shape, I wonder what causes a fruit to be a good 'paste' regardless of shape. CNR and SlKLUH make tomatoes meatier for sure, but there seems to be something more than meatiness, maybe fruit density that affects how they cook down (or is it biochemical, like pectin content or something of the kind?)

[Minnesota Mato]

I thought it would cool to have a heart tomato with ribbing or ruffling but can't find if it is even possible. every ribbed tomato I have found has flatten fruit and no juice. I have a genuwine which is a costoluto genovise x brandywine and it too is flattened and ruffled. A ruffled heart as a paste tomato would be cool.

[crmauch]

Here are some of the resulting tomatoes and maybe out there someone can resolve my confusion:

From my reading, Hi Beta crossed with a red tomato should have given me orange-red and that's what I got crossing w/ Jaune Flammee (when you read about JF it is quite high in Beta carotene and still pretty high in lycopene).

I crossing with 97L97, I expected the same. I didn't get that. All the plants from those crosses came out orange (in fact very close to my final goal for the OP in the F1). I'm sure the cross was successful because the plants are indeterminate (97L97 is determinate, and the fruits were more pointed than 97L97 (which is oval)).

As I stated crosses between Jaune Flammee and pastes came out pretty much as suspected. Their shapes are between the pastes and the oblate JF, and though the pictures look red, they are an orange-red. Athough the somewhat thick fleshed they are "wet"


JF X Opalka and Opalka X JF:
Exterior:
JFxOPOPXJFPict2.jpg

Interior:
JFXOpOpXJFPict2Inter.jpg

JFXOpInter.jpg


JF X Shannon and Heidi X Unknown (I'm 90% certain it was JF):

Exterior:
JFXShanHeidiXUnK.jpg

Interior:
JFXShanHeidiXUnKInter.jpg

JF X Shannon(repeat) and JF X Heidi:

Exterior:
JFXShanJFXHeidi.jpg

Interior:
JFXShanJFxHeidiInter.jpg

Now for the 97L97 cross (Not showing the 97L97 cross w/ Heidi):

It is orange (as noted) and were quite dry and had fairly thick flesh:

97L97 X Opalka:

Exterior:
97L97XOpPict2.jpg

Interior:
97L97XOpInterPict2.jpg

[Fusion_power]

You are getting exactly what you should get. Tangerine gene is recessive to lycopene. Beta Carotene is dominant over lycopene with the caveat that lycopene expresses significantly but not to the point of color dominance. Have you grown Caro Red?

BTW, I'd like to put my name on a pack of those Opalka X 97L97 and another of the Opalka X Jaune Flammee seed! They could give a VERY interesting segregation in the F2. Orangepalka anyone?

[crmauch]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

You are getting exactly what you should get. Tangerine gene is recessive to lycopene. Beta Carotene is dominant over lycopene with the caveat that lycopene expresses significantly but not to the point of color dominance. Have you grown Caro Red?

Not grown Caro Red.

If I'm getting what I should get why the difference between the Jaune Flammee hybrids and the 97L97 hybrids? (or more to the point is what is the difference betwen Jaune Flammee and 97L97?)