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Old August 31, 2014   #20
snugglekitten
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Land of the White Eagle
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Quote:
Originally Posted by carolyn137 View Post
Not unknown to me . First, I knew that Baker Creek had some not well known Solanums from reading the catalog and same for Tradewinds website, but I Googled them anyway to see all seed sources that might have them.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanum

In the above link the two you mention are noted under food crops,pepino and Narajilla. I know the latter is mostly tropical in nature but had to Google pepino/

What traits of those two might contribute to new tomato varieties?

Lots of places for S.muricatum seeds

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q...uricatum+seeds

And lots ofplaces for the other one as well.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q...uitoense+seeds

No adverts here b'c anyone can Google them.

Trade Winds and BakerCreek are the best known for carrying seeds like that.

Last year I was sent seeds for Naranjilla ( sp) by the same person who sent me tomato seeds for Loka, a variety from Accra, Ghana, and no way could I grow those seeds here and get anything productive unless I had a nice greenhouse.

Which is why I asked how these two species might be advantageous in a breeding program.Should be interesting to do, and no problem if you don't wish to anser, for I was mainly curious about the tropical nature of both having genes that might be of use in tomatoes, which did originate in the temperate high plains of mainly Chile and Peru, not in the lower terrain of tropical jungles.

Carolyn
Hi Carolyn,

I am posting for grafting purposes, not breeding, and its not a scientific basis I have for assuming they will be useful, just a hunch -

When grafting a potato-tomato together I got a tomato that had a dull-"potatoey" taste, and I also read that a tomato with a tobacco plant will have a small nicotine content, therefore perhaps grafting with a sweet solanum could create a sweeter tomato.

I mean, it may just be worth a shot, people are grafting with lots of different solonaceae but there are SO many, I doubt all have been done before, and something worthwhile may come up, who knows.

Personally I don't want to graft with any poisonous plants, even if they happen to have traits that could be beneficial.

Plus I know what you mean about upstate NY - I live in a somewhat similar area, colder continental climate, so perhaps I won't be the person to successfully pull this off, but I still think grafting is a fun hobby, and as I already said - its more of a fun thing than anything serious data collection or trials.

I do want to breed more with wild tomatoes to introduce increased disease resistence, having done only a little without real trials for these traits, but my grafting experiments are mostly just to satisfy my (strange perhaps) curiousity.

The naranjilla is supposed to be REALLY sweet, so worse comes to worse, I grow a few and have a great, exotic fruit to taste.

I don't have any real evidence to assume that grafting with a sweet solanum will create a sweeter tomato, but doing a few trials wouldn't hurt me either.

Last edited by snugglekitten; August 31, 2014 at 05:25 PM.
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