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Old December 26, 2012   #69
doublehelix
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Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: Central Arkansas
Posts: 190
Default wet blanket

I hate to be the one that throws the wet blanket on this project but since no one else has pointed out the improbability of it, I thought I would.

It's always important to do the math when dealing with genetics. If we assume that only 10 recessive genes are needed to give you the 10 traits you desire (post number 50), then you will need to grow out 1,048,576 tomato plants to find one with all of those traits. Chances are, there are actually more than 10 genes involved and this number does not take any kind of linkage into consideration. Assuming it would take about 5 minutes to plant each tomato it would require 87,381.3 hours to plant them. Given a one week window of field planting, and a 40 hour work week, that would mean you would need a work force of 2,185. It would require an even larger amount of time and work force in order to pick, document, and evaluate each plant. I don't even want to think about how much greenhouse space and the cost of potting mix and containers it would require to start 1,048,576 tomato seedlings.

Then when you start throwing in other traits(genes) that have been included in subsequent posts like crack resistance, fruit size, and keeping qualities, you now have increased your grow-out number to 67,108,864.

That is over 5 1/2 million man-hours just to plant them.

None of this even takes into account any plant physiology or biochemistry.

Many biochemical pathways will not function at those temperatures and there are a slew of enzymes that cannot be made below a certain temperature.

First, see if your plants really can survive a freeze. Then try to breed for that quality and that quality alone.
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