Flavour
 

What are the chances of flavour returning in future generations if lost in initial cross grow out?

I had a fabulous looking Not Ukrainian Heart (TNMUJ) last year but flavour was zip.

If you can grow out enough plants, the odds are pretty good. My experience with crosses is that they are usually bland in the extreme. The F3 will usually show decent flavor if its present to begin with.

Fusion

Fusion,

What generation are the Gary O'Senas you're starting this year?

PV

I am seeing this with the Brandywine X Tad F2 and beyond. Brandywine as we all know is superbly flavored - Tad is average at best. The F1 was very, very good. I grew out 11 of the F2 last year, none had the flavor of Brandywine, and they ran the range of average to very good - one was near excellent. Interestingly, the one large potato leaf bicolor (looked like Lucky Cross) was not all that flavorful. A few years ago, I grew out some of the F3, and some of those were quite good. Of course, Lucky Cross and Little Lucky, which emerged in the F4, have superb flavor.

I am going to grow 3 plants each of 4 of the F3 this year just to see what pops out next. But just from the above small experiment, the flavor genes do move about in the various segregates - and appearance is no clue as to the flavor!

Craig,

That's really wild.

That seems to mean that possibly there are some good flavored tomatoes lurking out there in commercial hybrids somewhere, huh?

I guess the fact that your F1s had superior flavor to the F2s, and then the superior flavor skipped a generation or two would mean that even if you were to start with a hybrid that had relatively good taste profile, you may have to grow out several generations before lockin' down a superior flavored OP.

Did you select for flavor as you went through F2, F3, F4, etc. for LL and LC?

And then, do you think that if you did select for flavor each generation, that possibly an even more superior flavor might've been lurking in one of the spawn that was rogued out?

PV

Lucky Cross and Little Lucky just kind of happened, with help from a NC gardening friend, Larry. I just went back to my records (they are on line - link below)

[url]http://nctomatoman.topcities.com/Seed_Database/TomatoFamilyTrees.ppt[/url]

scroll to the various Brandywine F2 pages - it is in power point.

One of the F2s I grew out in 1998 was potato leaf, medium sized smooth oblate and bicolored, and did have excellent flavor. I shared that with my friend Larry, who grew it out and saved seed - he sent that seed back to me; I grew out a few and the starts of both Little Lucky (smaller and rounder than the F2) and Lucky Cross (larger than the F2) emerged.

I think that there are probably other very good tomatoes in the material here, and have only scratched the surface.

Of the original hybrid, I've grown out 15 F2s, and from those, only 3 F3s, 2 F4s, etc - unusual things were still popping out in the F5 generation (grown out 8 of those), etc - it is a very tangled story, which you will get a taste of if you try to sort your way through that link!

Thanks all for your responses. Good to know there is still potential for good flavour in future generations, as I do seem to have an interesting assortment of F2s to work with of late :)

Wow!

Just checked out Fusion's pic of Gary O'Sena - what a beauty!!

Nice job Keith 8)

[img]http://www.selectedplants.com/gardenphotos/sena.jpg[/img]

Can't seem to get the link to work :? Ah, OK now ...