Quote:
Originally Posted by carolyn137
Dan, in your first post you said something like potential to be larger and I had a picture in my mind of an elderly man holding a de colgar multiflora with HUGE fruits. and it's taken me and hour to find it,so ya'll better enjoy looking at it,posted byIlex
http://tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=34658&page=4
Post # 47
I just got about 20 new varieties from Ilex,via SSE Yearbook, and mentioned to him about the one in post #47, and there were 3 deColgar ones sent but I don't yet know if any of them were like the one in the picture, or smilar.
In the last year or so I have become very interested in Spanish varieties b/c there are now a few in Spain who are sourcing large family ones, GWRipe ones and so much more. Vladimir's thread with his Spanish Project last year was also an eye opener for me as well.
When the Spanish took tomato seeds from Mexico they spread them to several places, but especially Portugal and Spain,which back then were not two separate countries.
So by mutation and X pollination they have more time than elsewhere to develop the biological diversity that's now being seen.
I was VERY impressed with that picture in post#47.   
Carolyn |
That is really impressive. I would love to see if we could develop something like that here.
I don't know enough about genetics to say for sure, but I think I have the start of developing a large-fruited multiflora. I have a lot of F2 seed of crosses of the Red Robin X Rose Quartz multiflora micros (the one ChrisK developed) with Brandywine Cowlick's, Pink Pioneer and Margaret Curtain. I have been growing out the F2s and culling for multiflora micros or small dwarfs that can be grown in pots or on a shelf indoors. I have many other crosses, but they are at the F1 stage now.
If I am correct in my understanding of the genetics, that means I am throwing away about 63 of every 64 plants I start. That seems to be close approximation to what I am seeing - One in four is dwarf - one in four of those is micro - and one in four of those is multiflora.
On the flip-side, it means that of the three in four that are full-size plants, one in four of those is multiflora. That means that 19% (about 1 in 5) of those full-size plants is multiflora. I think if someone grew out a bunch of those, we would see fairly quickly how the larger fruited plants do when they have the multiflora gene. The multiflora plants should be identifiable before they need to be planted, so someone would not have to waste garden space on the non-multiflora plants. They could concentrate only on the multiflora looking for size.
I know that small fruit size is dominant over large fruit size in the initial F1 growout. Frogsleap Farms had an excellent blog post explaining fruit size in crosses. The fruit size in the F2s & F3s trend more closely to the smaller size in most cases, but a certain percentage will have the size of the larger fruit in the original cross.
I don't have the garden space to do a proper grow-out to find the large-fruited multiflora. I would love to find someone who wanted to search for a large-fruited multiflora. I have plenty of F2 seed from those crosses and would be happy to send some to anyone willing to grow some out and report back on T'ville.