An interesting breeding possibility

[MrBig46]

Dr.W.Larchalex from botanic institute of University Insbruck (Austria) described (in 1958 y.) the guard of plants before frost with bor (spray by borax) in him experimental works. Bor reputedly increase immunity of cytoplasm against frost. The spray by borax is used at the guard of viniculture and too in fruit gardens (guard flowers). The guard against may frost was too certified for tomatoes and peppers.I write how I read.
Vladimír

[Fusion_power]

Tonight, I am mapping the garden layout into the varieties spreadsheet and added appropriate notes for each variety. It has taken 3 hours so far to compile the data. Tomorrow, I will start making notes on individual varieties so I can keep track of important traits like precocious flowering, plant habit, fruit size and shape, etc.

DarJones

[Diriel]

This project is really interesting.

[bower]

I've been keeping my data in a simple text file, too busy these days! But I had set up some tables so I sat down this morning and wrote up some of it so far - attached as pdf. Any comments or suggestions about data collection etc. are welcome. We live to improve and learn...
All my early starts have flowered now, and the fruit set data is coming in as well. Beaverlodge Plum is precocious like Kimberley, but it's a little bush, loaded with flowers and fruit. Hope they're fit to eat.
We had a couple of weeks of midsummer type temperatures in early May so the plants are pretty big. They endured a lot of cold nights in April but nothing under 40 F. We had three days of nasty cold weather recently which didn't reach a high of 60 F, so I was able to get some data on vegetative and fruit growth (for the few already fruiting) in cold conditions. Zolotoe Serdtse is the standout for fruit growth in the cold, so far. I could hardly hope for it, but I expect more data points like that one to come.
PI 120256 is outstanding, a gorgeous plant impervious to cold. A couple of the cold growth leaves fried, though (crispy black!) when it suddenly turned sunny with UV 7, poor thing. LA 1478 is having some serious pest or disease issues which didn't affect the toms, I hope it will outgrow it - still watching for the first flower buds on this wild currant.

Regrettably I did not get the Lycopersicoides accessions to germinate, and now I'm thinking it's too late, and I may not get fruit if I try to start them again now. It might be better to save the couple of seeds and try next year instead. Sorry about that, Dar. I have a houseful with my peppers and the 40 + plants for the farm trial, I literally didn't know where to put another seedling until they can be moved out. Some tomato plants at the farm greenhouse perished on the cold weekend, btw. I'm very happy to see all my plants surviving...

[Andrey_BY]

Any positive/negative news about results of this project, Dar?

[Fusion_power]

Yes Andrey, I had some very good results. But I am still testing seedlings so it will be a few weeks before I have anything definitive to report. Here are some early results:

Jagodka turned out to be a good choice for early determinate and somewhat heat tolerant.

Subarctic Plenty was a slightly larger tomato with outstanding overall performance including growing in cool conditions. Flavor is poor.

O-33, I-3, PI120256, and Krainey Sever all are excellent, much better than average. They produced good crops of fruit and showed better than normal tolerance to cool spring temps.


For disease tolerance, LA0417, LA2175 and LA2869 were standouts.

LA0417 is a population of S. Pimpinellifolium with some introgression from domestic tomato. Fruit is 1/2 inch diameter, red, sweet, and good flavored. One single plant out of about 8 - LA0417 that were planted turned out to be exceptional. I have a couple hundred seed saved.

LA2175 is a self compatible S. Habrochaites. It is exceptionally healthy with no visible signs of foliage disease to date and has loads of fruit. This one has very high breeding value because it is self compatible and it has high levels of tolerance to foliage diseases and to nematodes.

LA2869 is a self incompatible S. Habrochaites. The vines are very healthy with no visible signs of foliage disease to date. Fruit load is low as expected from a SI variety. Breeding value is moderate, SI tends to limit potential in crosses.

DarJones

[Diriel]

LA2175 seems promising. Any comments on fruit? I do not expect you to say it tastes great, but a few comments in general.

I managed to get Campbell's #19, #135, #146 seeds a week or so ago. I wanted some flavor and general disease resistance, so figured something like a Campbell's or Heinz variety might be a good place to start. Maybe it would be interesting to try to cross one of those to LA2175...?

Suggestions or comments appreciated. I do not have LA2175, how hard would seeds be to get?

[Fusion_power]

Diriel, LA2175 is a wild green fruited tomato relative. it does NOT taste good. Seed are easy enough to get. Making crosses with it may be another story. As a wild relative, crosses using pollen from LA2175 are most likely to work on ordinary tomato flowers.

[Diriel]

I will have to look into getting some LA2175 to give it a try. I will also be closely watching your work with LA0417. This was a really bad year for me and a couple of my gardening friends locally so disease resistance is really high on my list of priorities.

Thanks for the feedback,
Gary

[bower]

I collected flower, set and ripe time data for the plants in my trial, since each interval is said to be under separate genetic control and additive. The data is for single plants of each variety, except for two duplicates which were not subjected to the same stress as seedlings (warmer environment) and were planted a few days later. Both of the less-stressed plants ripened first fruit earlier than the more cold stressed counterparts. I may have to rethink my 'cold treatment' strategy....

I wish I had more space but one each is all I could do, take the results with a grain of salt. Stupice last year had DTM 120 days or one day less than this year, pretty close and perhaps conditions were similar - a very cold start.

[goodwin]

bower,

This is valuable data , and very helpful despite the individual sample size. At this point it is useful to throw a broad net, eliminating some varieties and confirming others. I like the way you organized the results - that took some thought. I think I'll put things in a similar format, and try to post in the next few weeks.
It was a strange year, and we certainly had plenty of opportunities to cold-stress plants this spring! Again, good work.

Lee

[bower]

Goodwin, thanks for the encouragement!

Heads up, though, after fixing one error last night I realized there are a bunch of clerical errors I must have made when converting the dates into interval numbers. I will have to go through them all and double check, will post the corrections hopefully tonight. The original data sheet with the actual dates on it is attached below.

I have temperature data as well for the time from transplant to the present. I am still mulling over how to organize the data... it does give more information about the conditions affecting the interval times for specific plants.

[bower]

Apologies to everyone, I went back and crosschecked everything with a calendar and a calculator - A LOT of errors in that file. Dates are correct in the second (original) data file, but there are some errors in the count of days, of course....
Minds me of the time I did aptitude tests in high school, and scored in the bottom ten percentile for clerical.... I guess it's true. Oh well. Next year I'll be printing a wall calendar, forget about trying to do sums late at night in my head...
The first file I posted is now corrected, attached.

[goodwin]

Beginning a new season -
I got one cross of LA1777 to take. There is a a good deal of heterosis evident in the seedlings as you might expect.
LA1777 (chilling, stress, resistance to late blight) might make a good cold-tolerant rootstock as well, so I plan to do some grafting this weekend.
Another blight resistant accession I was really impressed with, and which crosses easily, was LA 1269(Ph-3). It showed similar cold tolerance, going down to 28F, unprotected open field, with no damage. Humidity, of course, was very low.
Lee

[Keen101]

i have some seedlings of LA4135 an F1 S. lycopersicon X S. Pennellii that is in the group of wilds and semi-wilds. Joseph might be interested in offspring from that. This is somewhat in collaboration with Joseph Lofthouse's goals of restoring genetic diversity to the tomato genome by using wild tomato lines for breeding. Will try to plant some seeds for LA0716 S. Penellii and LA1969 S. Chilense today though it is late. Worth a try anyway. I will be watching LA4040 closely because it is supposed to be the introgression line drom S. Pennellii for the unfused anther cone and S. Pennellii flower genes.

I also have 1 healthy plant from the seed Joseph sent me for F2 of Fern x LA1777