2015 Breeding Lines

[Boutique Tomatoes]

I don't get in to participate in the forums much the past few years, but I do pop in to read the breeding related topics and the recent antho threads interested me. I thought I'd share some of this years selections from my own breeding work with the antho lines before I swing by to post a bit.

My primary focus is on cherry, saladette and salad lines that will ripen early and consistently here in my short season. I'm after a particular look, i.e. anthocyanin and stripes with good fruit qualities for market growers, not necessarily the big slicers I favored as a gardener and a tomato lover.

This is an F4, indeterminate 4-6 ounce. Seems to be somewhat resistant to cracking and checking, good internal color and good flavor, dark antho with subtle orange striping. There were sibling lines with more prominent striping but this plant had better fruit overall.


This one is my selection from the original Blue Green Zebra, my best guess is that it is F6, indeterminate 4-6 ounce. I've grown hundreds of plants from the original and tried to get to the best quality and most productive plants.


This is an F5, indeterminate 4 ounce. Seems to be somewhat resistant to cracking and checking, good internal color and good flavor, dark antho cap with strong green striping.


This is an F5, indeterminate 4 ounce. This one has a very nice tangy flavor but is a little on the late side for me, dark antho cap with strong green striping.


This is an F5, indeterminate 6 ounce.


These next 4 are all determinate salad/saladette lines at F5, ranging from 2-4 ounces. All of them are early, I was picking first fruits at 62 days this year. The plants are very compact, barely 3 ft tall. They bear heavily and would likely benefit from thinning the fruit clusters.





By about 80 days I was picking good quantities from the red determinate lines. They are firm and have excellent hang time, so they will easily sit on the vines for a week between pickings, good for the part time grower.


I have had some natural crossing happening in my antho lines. These next 5 were the result of a Jersey Devil cross with one of the antho breeding lines, I decided just to see what I would get; these are F3 now. The yellow cherry really threw me, but it had great taste.





The big monster came out of that same natural cross. It cracked and was too soft to be commercially useful but flavor was great and it ripened very early. I'm going to grow it out next year and select a plant to cross to something with better fruit quality and stripes to see if I might include a few large slicers in my efforts. ;-)


These are some not quite cherry, not quite salad sized lines that are coming along.





This one was a mystery plant that showed up in the row with antho GWR plants so I suspect a helpful insect cross. Flavor and vigor was good so we'll see what they produce next year.


This was a surprising F1 this year, one of the early antho salad lines crossed with a sweet striped orange cherry from Mark McCaslin. The plant was huge, up over the rafters in my trellis garden and the fruit set heavily in clusters that almost touched each other. I may have to try a couple of similar crosses to see if I get the same kind of growth.



There are some of the antho F2's from my efforts to get more orange and yellow in my lines. I discarded a lot of my early antho cherry lines as I couldn't seem to get away from a strange flavor that I suspect came from the parents.




One of the down sides to having a particular type I am looking for is that there are a lot of discards that might be something good.





And occassionally there is the wildly good looking one that has a fatal flaw. This beauty is seemingly susceptible to every bad thing in my garden, by the end of the season I have plants that are sticks with a few leaves at the end. The lack of foliage probably contributes to the unique anthocyanin expression.

[Cole_Robbie]

You win the Internet. Those are some of the nicest pictures I have ever seen.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

I went back and found this picture which tries to show how heavily some of the early determinate lines bear fruit. Next year I am going to thin the fruit on half of the plants and compare taste to see if having less fruit to ripen affects it.

[Fred Hempel]

Wow! Very nice collection.

[Aerial]

Seriously droolworthy pictures. I'm tempted to start some cherry tomatoes too albeit in October.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

A few more pictures, the forum software limits how many can be in a post

These next two are some of the determinate lines. Next year I will be making several F1 crosses with them to determine how well they combine to bring in their good characteristics, I would like the plants to be a little larger so I am curious to cross them with some of the indeterminate lines. They are firm fleshed but are not rin or nor and do have good hang time and shelf life without those genes.





The one larger striped anthoc beefsteak type I brought forward



This is a cut picture of the Blue Green Zebra selection



Finally, I do grow a few things that are just for my amusement when people start going on about how they never realized how diverse tomatoes can be. This one came out of one of Tom Wagner's Woolly lines, I can't recall which one.

[Salsacharley]

Holy Cow! Those are some Amazing Tomatoes. I agree with Cole...they are at the top of the nicest tomatoes list as regards appearance.

What marketing plans do you have for them?

[Hunt-Grow-Cook]

Fantastic pictures BT, absolutley stunning. Is the flavor something that can be improved in future generations or do you look to capture that in the early generations? Cant wait to see what comes of your creations.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

I'm still deciding what I want to do, this is just a hobby for me.

I don't want to release anything that is unstable, so I have a couple of years to go yet. I may work with an established breeder/seed seller to evaluate some of the more advanced lines. Since I discarded all of the first round of cherry crosses I did I still have quite a bit to do getting the colors and combinations I am looking for there. And a good salad sized orange/tangerine/beta carotene line with antho and stripes is still eluding me.

I'm currently focused on extended shelf life lines in my early generations, that was half of the crosses I made this year. Next year I'll be doing a large F2 grow out looking for a number of larger rin/rin lines to use for making salad size ESL hybrids and most of my 2016 crosses will be for adding in disease resistance factors and playing with making some F1 hybrid lines.

[ilex]

Originally Posted by Boutique Tomatoes

I'm currently focused on extended shelf life lines in my early generations, that was half of the crosses I made this year. Next year I'll be doing a large F2 grow out looking for a number of larger rin/rin lines to use for making salad size ESL hybrids and most of my 2016 crosses will be for adding in disease resistance factors and playing with making some F1 hybrid lines.

Have you considered using alc instead of rin?

As you want extended shelf life, there are many alc tomatoes developed with that in mind. 9 months storage is common. Is that enough? There are also many great tasting tomatoes among them.

I would love to see similar breeding work done with alc tomatoes.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

I haven't been at this for long enough to give a definitive answer, but for me if it hits the phenotype I am looking for or at least most of it I will bring a so-so F2 forward to F3 before making a decision on taste.

For example that round orange antho cherry was only so so for flavor in the F2 this year, but it was grown in the last row in that plot and it is partially shaded by a maple tree so it wasn't getting all the sun it should have. That row also competes with the tree for water and nutrients so it's not where I expect to get the best stuff out of. I've been growing F2's in less desirable locations because I don't really care if I get much off of them, I'm just looking for the characteristics I want. Even so, it was average enough and lacked stripes so I didn't save seeds until disease issues hit hard and that plant and a few others from that cross were the only things alive in that row, so it got a pass for potentially having a disease resistance that I wanted to keep.

That said, the early generations of a cross are all over the place with their genetics and nature is funny. I tend to grow a lot of plants and give them a chance if they hit most of my checkboxes.

[Patihum]

It appears that you are well on the way to accomplishing your goals.

There's most certainly a few of them that I'd buy in a heartbeat!

[charline]

very beautiful tomatoes! congratulations!
I will sure grow them when they are released

[PhilaGardener]

Gorgeous work and so much fun! Thanks for sharing your pictures with us!

[Gerardo]

Those beautiful, and "dangerous" beauties are welcome in my garden anytime. Waiting patiently for them to be released. Great work, beautiful pics. Many thanks for sharing.