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Originally Posted by carolyn137
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Thanks so much. Your best is very good indeed!
I used to work at a seed research company called Callahan's Seeds. I know just a little about how to pull 2-3 or even 100 strains out of any old OP variety. Or even how to introduce a kind of simulated F1 "hybrid vigor" to an old OP strain! Even if it has been stabilized for years. In fact it is actually easiest on the oldest most stable varieties.
When you make a "variety" really all you have done is select for a few traits and the rest of the plant should contain a certain amount of genetic diversity. So lets say you get some new unheard of disease ... lets call it "?1" .... that spreads throughout the world next year. That fictional disease kills 95% of Tomatoes. If I was a commercial breeder, I would plant 100,000 Rutgers and purposely give them "?1". They are ALL Rutgers, no cross was made, but hopefully if my variety was cared for properly, there would be 5% +/- that survive. Then I would self pollinate 5,000 "strains" of Rutgers to my target F? generation. Each line I would carefully try and retain all the standard "Rutgers" characteristics yet keeping each line isolated from the others and self pollinating. This is called "selfing" Eventually I would pick a few strains that had the best over all "Rutgers" characteristics but were "?1" resistant. Then I would cross those remaining Rutgers strains back to each other step by step until I have once again a relatively diverse genetically stable Rutgers but now it is "?1" resistant.
As you can imagine this method is incredibly expensive and many breeders might want to "cheat" and not run enough isolated strains before crossing them all back into each other. Especially since in the end you still have just "Rutgers". but with "?1" resistance. That's one reason why many so called "improved" versions of any fruit or vegetable often taste less than expected. They didn't maintain the integrity of the original because they selfed too few strains. The only ones willing to do that properly would generally be commercial growers (or a state run university like Purdue that had a lot of commercial growers in the state like Indiana) that had contracts with a large corporation like Campbells or Heinz to produce x amount of "Rutgers" for their processing. (My cousin was an executive at Van Camps and explained it to me from the corporate perspective years ago) Other breeders would actually find it financially beneficial to develop a "NEW" variety and patent it instead of simply improving an old variety. But if there is a contract to provide specifically "Rutgers" then that's what you had to do.
Well, back in the day in Indiana they had just such a group of commercial growers. That's why there was a very vigorous "Indiana" strain of true Rutgers that was also at the same time more disease resistant and productive than the original Rutgers strain developed at Rutgers University. There may have been some jealousy between Rutgers and Purdue Universities which might explain why Rutgers University refuses to acknowledge any "Indiana" strains as "true" Rutgers. In fact, Rutgers University claims Rutgers is an extinct variety now.
All I am looking for is that Indiana strain that was properly bred and maintained for the commercial growers, before the commercial market for Rutgers collapsed. I am probably crazy for hoping it still exists. But who knows? I will try your suggestions though and thanks very much.
PS. If you want to attach this thread to the old Rutgers thread, by all means. I am sorry for making a new thread from an old topic. My only excuse is I am new here.
