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Old July 2, 2015   #14
FLRedHeart
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Quote:
Originally Posted by stevenkh1 View Post
Thank you for taking the time to educate us on Mr White's voodoo science.

I want to grow the original, Acme - the purple variety....

... Trophy & Paragon are still available...why not Acme?

SOMETHING happened where this once wildly popular purple variety appears to be extinct. But I have to believe someone still grows it...
I haven't read Carolyn's links so forgive me if my opinion is covered anywhere in them (I sort of doubt it is). I think Acme simply ran its course. By all accounts, except seed company catalog blurbs, Acme was not bred for taste. I think that is pretty amusing because I relate the name Acme to the Coyote's mail order catalog and the supermarket that was never distinguished for quality.

The innovation of Acme way back, was that it simply was the best shipper in the business for many years. That happened because it was the smoothest and firmest of its generation, the fresh market reds were still more fluted and damaged in shipping. If you were a produce buyer at that time, the pink Acme was so generic you could get away with calling all your 'purple' tomatoes Acme. Acme was considered to have a purple sheen when looked at, due to the effect of having deep red flesh, even though that causes confusion today it was part of the definition of the variety then.

When you ask what happened, I would say the tomato just became obsolete. As new flavorful etc varieties came out, Acme became a southern tomato for shipping to northern markets as those in the north replaced it. It enjoyed great popularity with southern growers since it was a dependable shipper.

In the first 2 decades of the 20th century, fungal and bacterial diseases proliferated further in the south, and what was a dependable tomato became one with increasing complaints of wilt, blossom end rot and loss. Farmers being generally a conservative lot, abandoned it in favor of resistant varieties, but it took time.

Acme had another huge strike against it: It was relatively late as the newer varieties were introduced. The catalogs don't say this negatively but reading them comparatively this was true. The they even offered an "Early Acme".

Why no one saved Acme seems strange, but I imagine the lack of disease resistance made it basically an heirloom shipper with blah taste. People who got used to it though, like in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and S. Illinois and Indiana, if you notice, were shipping the furthest to the NE markets, and some still prefer pink to this day, which is probably due in part to Acme..

It is nice to think some is undiscovered out there that we might get to grow for historical curiosity. But the reality I think is that too many generations have passed to be optimistic. The best best would be to grow a modern version claiming to be Livingston's Beauty. That tomato was said to be a little lighter pink, slightly larger, but apparently not too much else distinguished it from Acme.

About Mr. White and how to best remember him, in his time he was influential but had passed his prime. I wouldn't want to remember him as Voodoo to be balanced as times, standards and knowledge have changed. He was more of an inspiration to young breeders to challenge their thoughts. When he was promoting his theory of species "jumping" (leapfrogging), the new crop of breeders probably benefited greatly from his discussion. It would have dominated the winter reading thread on T-ville ca. 1905.

Evolution was a contentious subject then as it is today with some. White was simply a former 'scientist' who became distracted as a senior with the God vs. evolution debate. He was an early outspoken critic of God-based creationists but convinced there were two competing theories of evolution: 1) that based on natural selection and Darwin and 2) That based on "leapfrog evolution" de Vries had advanced. He argued with religious fervor for the leapfrog theory of evolution. I imagine a Richard Dawkins type who got it wrong.

While the leapfrog thing sounds like voodoo today, at that time, the theory was very useful and first discussed "pangenes", a precursor idea influential to the discovery of what we know as genes today, and influenced the reason genes today are so-named. Additionally, the word mutation we all use was introduced by de Vries, too. de Vries' concept of mutation is what I called "morphing" above since it was wide scale, as opposed to point mutations, though wide-scale was what White was stuck on promoting. De Vries' idea about genes was they were they contained all genetics of a race.

White himself, after his publications about the tomato experiment refused to publish anything else. It is not clear to me whether this was due to heat from creationists or that of evolutionists, but I strongly suspect it was the failure for evolutionists to accept his leapfrog beliefs that did him in.

Tomato was the third species that he believed he held the distinction of demonstrating leapfrog evolution in (de Vries thought he demonstrated two and was clearly very insightful). However one of de Vries leapfrog examples ("mutations") turned out to be the correct explanation for primroses which can duplicate chromosomes, which could be considered a case of "leapfrog evolution" ... far from voodoo. With tomatoes, though, White wasn't so lucky, it's clear to me it was sloppy or fraudulent data, using a recessive gene in the modern evolutionary sense of PL plants.

This may border on a wandering post, but part of the lore of tomato varieties is the impact the varieties had on their contemporaries and I can think of nothing more deserving than this story Steven dug up and how Acme had a brief center stage in the debate on creation vs. evolution at the turn of the last century.
Cheers
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