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Old February 4, 2013   #26
b54red
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Join Date: Sep 2009
Location: Alabama
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Quote:
Originally Posted by doublehelix View Post
This is quite common because of the size of the population. If you planted a dozen or so seeds every season you might not see any difference. If you planted a few thousand you would see many that were different. Growing small populations over a long period of time you would be able to track many differences just as if you did them all in one season.

This is an important part to this discussion. When 2 or 3 seeds are planted in a segregating population you might think something is stable as early as the F3 as some of the people selling these tomatoes seem to think. When the grow out jumps from 10 or 20 seeds to 2000 seeds they are going to get a hard lesson in statistical analysis of segregating populations.

…And some angry customers.
I never claimed the pepper grow outs from hybrids to be totally stable; but compared to the grow outs from hybrid tomatoes they do seem to be much more stable even after several years. My conclusion is that they must be using parents that are not as far from the hybrid in characteristics as is seemingly the case with tomatoes. If you can't discern the difference without genetic testing then what difference does it make. I continue to plant the bulk of my peppers by purchasing hybrid seed of one or two red bell peppers that I really like. For my yellow bells and one other I will keep planting out the seed that have produced well for me from the hybrid grow out. I am not as big a fan of yellow bells or marconi types to worry if my experiment fails. One of the yellow bells has actually produced a few plants that were better tasting than the original hybrid with thicker walls so that was a plus.

I no longer try any grow outs of hybrid tomatoes because I have rarely gotten a tomato plant from them that was as good as the original hybrid. I now keep my tomato experimenting to growing out flukes from known OP varieties. One result was Indian Stripe Potato Leaf which I sent to Carolyn. It has been a very stable and unique tomato as far as I can tell and from all the gardeners I have sent the seed to. I am working on growing out another fluke from Indian Stripe that has a different color and size. I don't know if it is at all stable yet but it has shown remarkable fusarium resistance for two years now. I am going to really put it to the test this year by using it as the rootstock for several dozen different varieties. I have hopes that it will be successful but will in no way be surprised if it isn't. I have only found a few heirlooms that have consistently shown fusarium resistance but I am constantly looking for more.
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