How long can you keep a plant going through rooted cuttings?

[harveyc]

I've got a hybrid tomato that is producing different fruit than the other plans I've got of the same plant. It might be a branch mutation. I'm going to take some cuttings and over-winter them in my greenhouse to grow it next year.

A friend once told me that a plant would eventually mutate and no longer come true through rooted cuttings. Is that true?

Also, will an indeterminate tomato continue to produce indefinitely if propagated through rooted cuttings?

Thanks!

[Darren Abbey]

As things grow, they mutate. In animals, the next generation is produced from cells which are isolated from many of the stresses of daily life... but in plants the next generation is produced from the equivalent of our skin cells. So, different cuttings from the same plant will have unique mutations which are different from each other. Over time those mutations will accumulate.

That said, because seeds are produced in the same way from surface tissues, different seed lines will also accumulate the same sorts of mutations over time.

The main difference is that cuttings will carry viruses and fungi from the parent plant, while seeds tend to not carry the diseases of the parent. This might be a more significant factor in producing the pattern your friend mentioned.
----
An indeterminate tomato should indeed keep on producing, though it might slow down with changes in growing conditions. In biology very little is entirely solid in its behavior, so I wonder if determinate tomatoes would also keep growing and producing through cuttings. I do expect the two types would respond differently to the process.

I've grown cuttings through four generations without observing any apparent mutations. The cloned plants didn't seem to have any less vigor than the parent and the fruit remained true to the parent. Those plants were indeterminate hybrids. I have no idea how long or how many generations those observations would remain true.

Ted

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by harveyc

I've got a hybrid tomato that is producing different fruit than the other plans I've got of the same plant. It might be a branch mutation. I'm going to take some cuttings and over-winter them in my greenhouse to grow it next year.

A friend once told me that a plant would eventually mutate and no longer come true through rooted cuttings. Is that true?

Also, will an indeterminate tomato continue to produce indefinitely if propagated through rooted cuttings?

Thanks!

As someone above explained, rooting cuttings is cloning so what you should get are identical plants.

But if you have a branch mutation, that's something entirely different. Those are called somatic mutations and arise from a DNA mutation in a cell as opposed to DNA mutations in the seed.

What variety are you growing and what are the normal fruits like for this variety and how are the fruits of one branch different?

There can also be a single fruit on a plant that's the result of a somatic mutation. A good example of that is Yellow Riesentraube which arose from a single fruit on a plant with normal red fruits.

All you need to do is to save seeds from the fruits on that one branch, I can't see the need to take a cutting and clone it. Those saved seeds, now the F2 seeds, need to be grown out again to see what kinds of plants and fruits you get. If it were an OP ( open pollinated) variety, you wouldn't have to do that but you say this somatic mutation is on an F1 hybrid so you might expect to see some genetic segregation and then make selections, etc.

If you take a single cutting, and that's all you can do with one branch, all you get is another plant and I bet you'd like to perpetuate that somatic mutation, which IMO is best done via seeds from those fruits.

[harveyc]

It's a SunGold F1 and a six foot branch on one plant produces larger than normal fruits. I grew 120 plants and this branch/stem is the only one that produced fruits of this size, up to 1.25" in diameter. I think my chances of reproducing it will be better with cuttings than seeds. I don't see any evidence of any disease so I'll take my chances. I've done very little work with tissue culture but might even give that a shot if results are good.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by harveyc

It's a SunGold F1 and a six foot branch on one plant produces larger than normal fruits. I grew 120 plants and this branch/stem is the only one that produced fruits of this size, up to 1.25" in diameter. I think my chances of reproducing it will be better with cuttings than seeds. I don't see any evidence of any disease so I'll take my chances. I've done very little work with tissue culture but might even give that a shot if results are good.

YOu grew 120 plants of Sungold F1? I don't read every thread but can I assume you're commercial or have a CSA?

OK, so one branch with the same colored fruits but of a larger size.

Reinhard Kraft in Germany has done the most work with Sungold F1 in terms of trying to dehybridize it to the OP state.

So he's released:

Sungold Select
Sungold Select II

His friend Manfred Hahm was sent two selections which were named:

Big Sungold
Big Sungold Select

And I've been offering that last one in my annual seed offer here but it still isn't quite geneticall stable, but does have a much larger size, yes, in the 1- 1/2 inch range.

Lee Goodwin, whose website is J and L Seeds, can find in the Seed and Plant Source Forum has also been working with Sungold F1 and trying to get OP versions and Lee posts here at Tville. In my last seed offer I offered seeds of his Ambrosia and at his website he offers the orange and pink and red versions of those.

By taking cuttings off that one branch as has been said, is vegetative cloning, which is the same as working with tissue culture, but I don't think I know of anyone who has been or is vegetatively setting up tomato tissue monoculture or if it would even work, as one would for African Violets for instance, and the latter is done by those who are commercial.

If you take a cutting which will give you just one plant to start with, what's your game plan in terms of going forard from there. I mean for your own interest and use, or what?

You might want to grow out at some time Big Sungold and Big Sungold Select to compare with what you have.

Hope that helps.

[harveyc]

Not quite "commercial". I'm a farmer but the tomatoes were grown for a teenage son's summer job. He/we sold mostly to a roadside stand and he did very well. Once some of the other tomatoes reached peaked production some of the SunGold were abandoned as that is more than we could keep up with.

I plan to take several cuttings, figuring I'll try to start 10 new plants and will share with a couple of friends and figure it out after that. I could always take cuttings from the new plants over the winter but I'd rather just see if these give similar results next year.

I noticed your seed offer too late last year but will watch more closely.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by harveyc

Not quite "commercial". I'm a farmer but the tomatoes were grown for a teenage son's summer job. He/we sold mostly to a roadside stand and he did very well. Once some of the other tomatoes reached peaked production some of the SunGold were abandoned as that is more than we could keep up with.

I plan to take several cuttings, figuring I'll try to start 10 new plants and will share with a couple of friends and figure it out after that. I could always take cuttings from the new plants over the winter but I'd rather just see if these give similar results next year.

I noticed your seed offer too late last year but will watch more closely.

And please remember to report back b'c a true somatic mutation usually results in a single fruit of a different color or shape or a branch which has all fruits of a different color or shape than the ones expected for the variety.

I've been lucky enough to see only two somatic mutations myself.

One was with the v ariety Dix Doight de Naples where one branch still had red red fruits but with an entirely different shape. The other was with the varity Green Gage which should have yellow fruits but one branch had all red fruits.

perhaps you've seen the variety Casino Chips mentioned here. It arose as a somatic mutation from the variety Casino which is a very large red plum shaped variety from Italy and one branch had these cherry sized ones.

But for all three that I just mentioned the varieties were OP so saving the seeds gave rise to the fruits determined by the somatic mutation.

You know, I've been trying to think of a somatic mutation with a hybrid variety and I can't come up with a single one. Do they never happen, are they just not reported, I wonder why I;ve seen no reference to somatic mutations with hybrids.

BTW, I'm the farmer's daughter since I was raised on a farm where we had acres and acres of tomatoes and I was out there helping when I was maybe 5-6 years old.

[harveyc]

I happened to be reading about Casino Chips just after my last post.

I should state that I'm not positive that it's only once branch of this plant that is different. I pruned away competing growth from neighboring SG and it got too confusing. The other stems of this plant might just be choked off from the plant to the south, but this one stem certainly is more vigorous than any other SG I grew this year. I think mutations, whether somatic or otherwise, might be more common in large plantings but go largely ignored due to time constraints.