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Old December 12, 2017   #19
bower
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
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Using a PL mother is a great trick for beginners, because it allows you to see right away whether your cross took if you have any uncertainty about it.
And there are other reasons for choosing a mother, for sure equally valid. One that Fred H pointed out awhile back is the receptivity or ease of working with a certain mother - not all tomatoes are equally easy to cross to. I have definitely noticed that as well. So Nan, your decision to use the larger fruit as mother because micro blossoms were so small and hard to work with, is certainly valid.
Choice of mother is most important, perhaps, where the traits of interest are strongly affected by maternal DNA, due to the influence of mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA on specific traits such as earliness and cold tolerance. It is easier to recover those traits in F2 etc by choosing the right mother.
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