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Originally Posted by Walt
I had a class under Dr. Carl Clayberg. He was a bean breeder at that time, but he had been a noted tomato breeder. He commented in a lecture that domestic tomatoes were very hard to cross with S. peruvianum and S. Chilense, and that it had been thought for years that the F1 was just as hard to cross. Then it was discovered that unrelated F1 plants were quite interfertile.
Bear in mind that if you are working for years on crossing something with zero success that "quite fertile" might mean something like 2% fertile. So I don't know how fertile the F1 plants are.
I'm set up for tissue culture, and I've thought about trying these crosses. It is very easy to think about things. Tomato crosses are one of the easiest things in the world to think about.
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Just an update. Some seedlings have emerged in the pot labeled Solanum chilense. There might be one for Solanum pennellii but it's still early, hoping for lots of little seedlings to increase the chance of at least one making it to adulthood. I don't know if i will purposely be trying to make crosses with all these wild tomatoes and hybrids and mixed-heritage lines, but i figure if they are all growing in the same garden then that increases the likely hood of any small pollinators that may visit the wild tomatoes and make natural crosses with each other hoping that some will be naturally compatible and make fruits on their own.