Yes, 'Mountain Gem' is a release from my continued emeritus tomato breeding through NCSU and just came on the market. Seedway has the seed for sale, but it did not make it into their catalog product listing for 2019. Twilley Seeds has information listed for it at their product website.
I am concentrating now on specialty types of different sizes, shapes and colors, mostly indeterminate types with multiple disease reistances, improved flavor and shelf life but have contiuned limited breeding on the regular round, determinate hybrids of the type released during my career at NCSU. 'Mountain Gem' is homozygous for the crimson gene and has excellent color. Brix has been as high or higher than that of 'Tasti Lee' with a good balance of acids and sugar. Everyone who has tried it has commented favorably on its flavor (taste) for a high yielding, determinate type with concentrated fruit set and firm fruit. People who have canned and processed it in other ways have been very happy with the results.
I suggest taking a look at it to see how it fits into your growing needs, especially for those growing for market. It is a definite improvement over the other late blight resistant determinate hybrids that have come on the market over the last few years. Because of the university restrictions on free release of breeding lines, I am not in position to make the parental lines openly available, but other breeders can self the hybrid and develop their own lines, which is really the exciting part of tomato breeding. I think they willl find useful material coming out of this hybrid, especially those who are now taking advantage of molecular markers to identify the disease resistance genes in lines they are developing.
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