new guy needs help with abreviations

[Lowlander]

what does "OP" mean?

also, what do you guys speak of when you say "Tand a number after the T"?

geez I'm a new guy

[Doug9345]

OP means open pollinated. The significance is that open pollinated varieties should produce seeds that are the same as parents.

[tgplp]

Hey there, welcome to Tomatoville! Can you give an example of what you are talking about when you say "T and a number after the T"

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head would be talking about a type of growlight, for example I have two types of grow lights, T5 lights and T8 lights. They are just different sizes of bulbs (at least I think).


Is that what you are talking about?


Taryn

[carolyn137]

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=5317

Lowlander, have you had a chance to read through the above thread, which was started b'c many folks needed to know the many abbreviations that many folks here use?

The above thread is a "sticky" at the top of this General Discussion Forum, meaning it stays put where it is and doesn't move down when folks post in it or the other stikys and has already helped many folks and I hope you find it useful as well.

It was started in 2007 and has been continually added to as time goes on.

[zabby17]

Lowlander,

Did you maybe mean "F" plus a number, in the context of how many generations from the original "parents" a hybrid tomato is?

Z

[Lowlander]

Originally Posted by zabby17

Lowlander,

Did you maybe mean "F" plus a number, in the context of how many generations from the original "parents" a hybrid tomato is?

Z

Yes,...I see posts about T7 plants etc. What does that mean?

I will be checking out the sticky to get some idea of these abbreviations.

also, as far as getting seeds the same as the parents,..how is this acheived?? Is there a way I can save seeds from this year's plants, and have them produce the same size/amount next year?? anytime I have let "volunteer" plants grow from seeds in the soil from last year, they never really get any size to them and don't produce very much, if at all.

[dice]

T-6 is a newly discovered abbreviation for "Tarasenko 6", a fine tomato
cultivar from the Ukraine:
http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/wiki/Tarasenko_6

T-5, T-8, and T-12 are flourescent bulb sizes (T-12 is the one that has
been around for many decades, T-8 and T-5 are newer designs):
http://donklipstein.com/f-lamp.html

T-[anything else] is probably a typo.

An explanation of the F-? generations in hybridizing, like the F-1
commercial hybrids that one finds listed at vendors:
http://kdcomm.net/~tomato/gene/genes.html
(Go on to the link titled "Segregation" at the bottom of the page,
and you will see the succession of F-2, F-3, etc laid out.)

Tomatoes will self-fertilize. A tomato plant can produce fruit with seeds
from its own pollen. This is how most tomato flowers are fertilized. (Bees
are the wild card here.) If the tomato plant is an open pollenated variety,
OP, both the pollen and the ovaries in the flowers have the same genes,
in "homozygous" pairs (recessive-recessive or dominant-dominant).
When the seeds from those fruit are planted, the same kind of plant
(genetically) grows from them as the plant that produced them.

With F-[whatever] hybrids that are not stable OP, they have some
gene pairs that are "dominant-recessive". The plant shows the trait
from the dominant gene, but when it self-fertilizes, the seeds can
have "dominant-dominant", "recessive-recessive", or
"dominant-recessive" gene pairs. The seeds with "dominant-dominant"
or "dominant-recessive" gene pairs will produce plants that show the
characteristic of the dominant gene in the pair, while seeds with a
"recessive-recessive" gene pair will show the recessive trait. So you
get variations in the plants grown from seeds saved from hybrid plants
with "dominant-recessive" gene pairs.

So volunteers from hybrid seeds are a bit unpredictable in growth habit,
fruit size and color, flavor, and so on. If they are late and do not produce
well, that is probably simply a result of getting a late start and growing
in a less optimal spot in the garden (no fertilizer, soil not improved,
less light, inconsistent water, and so on). That would apply to volunteers
from both hybrid and open pollenated plants.

[Lowlander]

holy smokes dice, looks like this tomato thing is a LOT more complex than I had thought. I can see I have a LOT LOT LOT to absorb in relation to tomatos.

[dice]

You do not have to soak all that in to grow tomatoes, but if you want
to know why seeds saved from an F1 hybrid like Better Boy do not
produce Better Boy plants again when planted, yet seeds saved from
an OP like Early Rouge produce Early Rouge plants, that is why.

You are probably going to want to bookmark this URL, where you
can look up descriptions of and grower experiences with a great many
OP varieties:
http://t.tatianastomatobase.com:88/w...o_Variety_List

[rsg2001]

Isn't the T after the name of a variety just an indicator that the variety is resistant to tobacco-mosaic virus? As in VFNT after the name, meaning resistance to verticilium wilt, one variety of fusarium wilt (F1 I believe), nemotodes and tobacco mosaic virus? Or FFF which means resistance to the three kinds of fusarium wilt.

I did not read the sticky, so I apologize if I'm off base, but usually that's what the letters after the name of a given variety mean. There is a lot of information elsewhere on the Tomatoville site about the myth of resistance, i.e., it doesn't mean the plant is impervious to a disease, just that it might last a little bit longer against the disease than more susceptible varieties. Plus the fact that most varieties, especially O.P. and heirlooms, haven't been challenge-tested for resistance -- it's mainly hybrids that are because of the $$$ invested by larger seed companies in their own developed hybrids.