Sioux was one of the tomatoes I was growing during the summer of 1954 back on the family farm in Kansas. It was one of the earliest tomatoes to ripen for us and did well in the heat.
But it was also one of the main reasons I got into breeding tomatoes. Sioux cracked so bad that I just had to cross it with whatever we had the time. My great grandmother had a German tomato that she brought over from Graben Neudorf, Germany in 1888. Our families grew it along with the other kinds for many years. I crossed the Sioux with the German tomato. I did not get any better crack resistance but I liked the yields. I noticed that the hybrid did not keep the pink color of fruits, nor the potato leaf from the German tomato, but at least the hybrid did well in the summer heat.
Later on in the late 1950's I used Glamour to cross to the Sioux and got good crack resistance. Little did I know at the time that Glamour had Sioux as one of the original parents of it.
Heat resistance is not what I need for breeding where I live now. This morning it was 46 degrees. I have lots of tomato lines that need a bit more heat to set even one fruit, therefore, my selection criteria is much different than most folks.
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