Creating my own tomato variety

[Burner]

Well. Not really.

But I'm wondering...

If an individual were to harvest seeds, year after year, from a tightly grouped tomato garden, filled with a variety of tomato plants...
couldn't a person end up with their own "variety" of tomato eventually?
Especially if attention to detail is observed and the garden is a controlled environment.

Unless my math is off, this certainly seems possible, and seems to be what people have done for years.

Here's what I'm thinking, and please correct me if I'm wrong:

I've got 10 different tomato varities going this year.

At the end of the year I'll harvest seeds from each, and see what comes up the next year. Each year I'll select from the best and eventually (in theory) narrow down a preferred tomato.

Am I totally insane?

[TZ -OH6]

In my garden of mixed tomato varieties cross pollination due to bee activity is around 15-20 percent. Some fruits have no crossing, while others have 40% of seeds crossed. If you want to make your own variety just pick a parent plant with a recessive trait like potatoleaf foliage and grow out any seedlings that sprout up with regular leaves.

Or simply grow out ANY seeds from a hybrid variety. All of them will be new and different (but probably worse than the parent).


The problem with growing out crossed seed from heirlooms is that you have two parents that have been seleceted for favorable flavor traits, and when you mix the genes, those genetic combinations fall apart and there is a high probability that what comes out will be just average in flavor so you have to grow out many plants to find the good ones, and if you do not isolate those (bag blossoms) then you keep going two steps forward, one step back because of further cross pollination muddying the gene pool.



It is much less trouble in the long run to induce the cross you want in the first place (lots of pictorials on the internet of how to cross tomatoes) and then stick with those progeny.

[Burner]

Ok, thanks TZ. That's exactly what I was wondering.
I suppose I imagined this fantastic tomato coming out of the mixing of the varieties, but apparently I'm more likely to end up with a not so good tomato.

So would you advise reordering heirlooms each year rather than trying to collect seeds?

Thanks again, btw.

[TZ -OH6]

You can either use the first fruits for seed each year to reduce the probability of cross pollination or you can go to Walmart, etc party/wedding section and buy 5"x7" drawstring sachets and put those over trusses of unopened buds to prevent bees from getting to them. Once you have seeds for an OP/Heirloom variety there is no reason to ever buy seeds again. And you can trade for more varieties.

If you are handy with a sewing machine you could just buy the netting material (tule?) and make basgs. Some people do that and bag entire branches or whole plants when doing peppers, but that is overkill for tomatoes when you just need 1-2 fruits for plenty of seed.

[Rob]

I changed my user name to Rob.
So...
I'd tie some material around the unopened bud to keep the bees away right? The material would need to be open enough to allow air pollen in though, correct?

[TZ -OH6]

The material needs to breath enough to let the buds dry after they get wet so that they don't mold. There is also the problem of heat buildup if the sun shines on an impervious bag.


Tomatoes are mainly self pollinated, the pollen containing anthers form a cone around the sigma. The cone has pores inside that let the pollen dribble out little by little as it ripens/matures. Vibration helps the pollen fall out easier. As the bud matures the stigma grows and protrudes out of the cone and can pick up pollen on its way. Vibrations from wind etc produces a little cloud of pollen right around the stigma as it shakes free and that can stick to the end of the stigma. Tiny little halictid bees and larger bumble bees bite onto the anther cone, curl their bodies under the end of the cone and and vibrate their bodies to induce pollen to fall out. This greatly helps self pollination, but the bee's body may have pollen still on it from the next plant over and that can get rubbed onto the stigmatic surface when the flower gets mollested.


So pollination from other plants by the wind is not very common at all. The pollen just gets diluted out too much before it can blow to another flower. Wind pollinated plants like ragweed, pine trees etc produce huge amounts of pollen because of this. Flowers evolved to attract insects so that they would not have to waste so much pollen, as a result they produce relatively little.

[Rob]

Ok TZ, thanks a bunch. I have a clear understanding of the process now, thanks to you. Very fascinating.

On a brief side note: speaking of pollinating pines...
Yesterday I was in a large grove of pine trees when a strong gust of wind kicked in. The trees swayed in the wind and then appeared to explode into a massive cloud of dust. It was amazing to see.

[Rob]

One other thing on topic:

If I were to put two tasty varieties next to one another, let's say a black krim and a Cherokee purple for example, maybe even placing the flowers of each in a netting bag together somehow, and assuming timing and all other factors fall into place, would that likely produce seeds that would be a tasty mix of the two when grown the next year? Or is something else going to happen?

Let's assume that I do grow several plants from the seeds, and upon tasting, examining, etc, I find one that indeed seems to be a mix of the two.
If I were to then keep harvesting the seeds in subsequent years of that particular line (protecting against cross-pollination, etc), would that then continue to be the black krim / Cherokee purple variety from then forward?

*Rob suddenly realizes that he's probably just described the heirloom process*

*Rob wishes he had spent more time in biology and botany as a youth instead of chasing girls and taking art classes...*

[The Helpful Gardener]

Rob is definitely learning...

It never stops my friend...

HG

[Rob]

In my garden of mixed tomato varieties cross pollination due to bee activity is around 15-20 percent. Some fruits have no crossing, while others have 40% of seeds crossed. If you want to make your own variety just pick a parent plant with a recessive trait like potatoleaf foliage and grow out any seedlings that sprout up with regular leaves.

Or simply grow out ANY seeds from a hybrid variety. All of them will be new and different (but probably worse than the parent).


The problem with growing out crossed seed from heirlooms is that you have two parents that have been seleceted for favorable flavor traits, and when you mix the genes, those genetic combinations fall apart and there is a high probability that what comes out will be just average in flavor so you have to grow out many plants to find the good ones, and if you do not isolate those (bag blossoms) then you keep going two steps forward, one step back because of further cross pollination muddying the gene pool.



It is much less trouble in the long run to induce the cross you want in the first place (lots of pictorials on the internet of how to cross tomatoes) and then stick with those progeny.

I just read this post again after several weeks, and it makes much better sense to me now. Thanks again.

[Rob]

Rob is definitely learning...

It never stops my friend...

HG

It is indeed quite fascinating. I feel naive without a real foundation in botany. It's tough to frame the questions correctly, partly because the terminology isn't there for me, and neither is an understanding of the processes.
Still, by this time next year, and thanks to you guys, I'll have this stuff down cold.

[The Helpful Gardener]

Hey this stuff has been fascinating ever since Gregor Mendel started mucking about with fruitflies. Genetic sequencing of more and more species, including humans, is teaching us more on the subject daily. One thing for sure, we humans can have amazing effects on nature; postive when we pay attention and not so much when we don't.

Breeding is one of those places where we can be positive, but only if we keep sight of the fact that what benefits man is not always what benefits nature, and losing the native flora and fauna of any area is not just a matter of direct threats, but genetic pollution and habitat loss from invasives. As long as the plants we breed "first do no harm", then our horticultural and agricultural pursuits can only benefit the biota (and that's us toov )

HG

[Rob]

*heads out the door with chainsaw in search of Tamarisk...*

[The Helpful Gardener]

Go get 'em, man...

This is my weapon of choice, I have a large and an Xlarge

http://weedwrench.com/

HG

[Rob]

Go get 'em, man...

This is my weapon of choice, I have a large and an Xlarge

http://weedwrench.com/

HG

You sound an awful lot like a park ranger. We do a lot of invasive removal at our park, and the weed wrench is a crucial tool to have. Along with a lot of elbow grease.