Breeding a "Cosmopolitan tomato" ?

[rubbe87]

Has anyone tried making a Cosmopolitan tomato? cross-breeding for as much genetic diversity as possible? Like the Cosmopolitan Chicken breeding project?

I been doing it sort of like that for 5 years but i have letting it randomly cross each year whit unknown parents. Started whit cherry tomatoes from the store and been saving each generation. i now got two distinct tomatoes whit potato leafs and the skin is very thick. i had problems whit sterility this year though only one seed made it in one of the types and the seedling almost died but i managed to nurse it back to health.

[travis]

I am not familiar with the Cosmopolitan chicken project.

With regard to sterility, there are numerous F1 hybrid tomatoes now that have one male sterile parent, and this is particularly true of grape cherries and grape saladettes.

Many of those hybrids with a male sterile parent line can be detected when you grow the F2 seeds. If you see new sprouts that have clear, glassy, light green stems, these may be ms-10 (male sterile) with the ms gene linked tightly to the anthocyanin absent (aa) gene.

This gene linkage is used by tomato breeders to identify the male sterile plants in the post-germination, early sprout stage, for use as the pollen recipients in hand crosses to avoid the necessity of emasculating the flowers when producing F1 hybrid seed.

[rubbe87]

The Cosmopolitan Chicken is carrying the genes of all the planet's chicken breeds basically.
here is the site http://www.ccrp.be/

The resulting chickens with have an abnormally wide gene pool. and the increased genetic diversity of the chickens has led to “an increased fertility and immunity three times greater than commonly bred chickens.”

[bower]

hi Rubbe87, welcome to T'ville!

You may be interested to check out the work of Tom Wagner, for an approach to tomato breeding that maximizes genetic diversity.

As regards your project, are you letting your plants be crossed randomly by bees or other pollinators? The rate of pollinator crosses is pretty low in tomatoes - maybe as low as 5-10% afaik, because the flowers are designed to self pollinate, and usually start to pollinate early on - this is why for breeding purposes, we remove the anthers from the flower at the stage just before it opens, to prevent it from pollinating itself.

For another interesting take on wild and random crosses, check out the threads by Joseph Lofthouse, in his project to select tomatoes with flowers more attractive to bees, and to develop a more outcrossing population of tomatoes for a landrace adapted to his location. There are some great pictures of flower structures that may help to promote random crossing by bees.

[LindyAdele]

I think it's a neat idea to have a tomato with a great genetic diversity. I think starting with a store-bought tomato and letting nature run it's course might not be the most prudent way to get there. Consider what some tomato breeders have been able to do starting with some 'wild' tomato varieties.

Check out this link - which gives you seeds that will have an unpredictable number of traits. http://shop.wildboarfarms.com/CREATE...VARIETY_c9.htm

[rubbe87]

Thats cool i guess but it does not seem that varied. mixing in some wild tomato species would be cool though.

[LindyAdele]

I believe (and someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong!) that these tomatoes that I linked to did have wild ones bread into them.

And there is a tremendous variety in size, shape and colour within these tomatoes. I recommend the book Epic Tomatoes, which explains a lot about tomato breeding, dominante and recessive traits and selecting for genetic diversity.