For us newbs wondering about genetics

[epsilon]

I was cruising around the internets last night and I found this page

http://kdcomm.net/~tomato/Tomato/mutant.html

It has a really simple explanation of hybridization and segregation
and the page that I linked to has a list of dominate and recessive genes

It's an interesting read for any of us who ever wondered about making a hybrid, and what to look for.

Gaston

[joseph]

As a plant breeder, those sorts of lists are somewhat useful to me. I say somewhat, because there are tens of thousands of genes in a plant, and they interact with each other in multitudes of ways, so that even if a gene is present in the DNA of a plant, it might not be active due to one of the necessary precursor genes being missing. Or a gene that is present might be turned off due to a combination of other genes.

Mendelian genetics hasn't been all that useful to me in dealing with multi-gene traits in plants. Things just get too complicated too fast. I end up falling back to the traditional time-tested understanding of genetics: "Offspring tend to resemble their parents".

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by epsilon

I was cruising around the internets last night and I found this page

http://kdcomm.net/~tomato/Tomato/mutant.html

It has a really simple explanation of hybridization and segregation
and the page that I linked to has a list of dominate and recessive genes

It's an interesting read for any of us who ever wondered about making a hybrid, and what to look for.

Gaston

Yes, that's Keith's site, whom I've known for many years and I've linked to it several times here.

If you don't know he got his MS degree with Dr. Randy Gardner in NC, and I think many here know of all the great varieties that Randy has bred, and he reads here from time to time. A couple of years ago he sent me lots of seeds of Plum Regal F1, Smarty F1 and my fave Mountain Magic F1, and I made a large seed offer here for all three. Perhaps he's best known for his Mountain series of varieties.

Keith knows more about tomato genetics and other aspects of tomatoes than most others I know. Period.

And all the links he provides should satisfy anyone wanting to learn more.

Carolyn

[Fusion_power]

Randy Gardner has another line in process of being released. One of the parents is a highly disease tolerant line he developed and the other parent is a familiar pink potato leaf tomato. I grew it 2 years ago and the overall plant traits are pretty good. Flavor is close to the PL parent.

[epsilon]

I'm even more glad that I stumbled onto this site. After my last few posts I started wondering what it was that caused the the fluting in some varieties, and now it seems like there's a few different gene expressions which go into the fluting that I like so much.

Also on an unrelated note I was surprised to see eugenol production as a genetic trait. This is interesting to me in the area of perfumery. Eugenol is an aroma chemical that is important in almost all classic fragrances and even smells that we've become very accustomed to and that we know from our everyday lives. This would explain why I can sometimes detect a "rosy" or "floral" quality from some tomatoes and not from others.

[nnjjohn]

agree with you epsilon,, this site is amazing enough,, Carolyn thank you for helping me too..hope all is well and you are feeling better these days