Hybrid is as Hybrid does

[Solanum315]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

(There are different strains of Brandywine that are accepted by the most elitist tomato nerds so why shouldn't you be able to stabilize and sell your strain of a landrace?)

You've called me a nerd before and explained that it's a term of affection, but now I guess you've upped it to elitist nerd.

I'm not going to go into the two definitions of strain here since a search will bring up several threads, one being titled What is a Strain, as I recall.

Now to Nagcarlang, or however one wants to spell it. There's lots of info about it and the two Filipino ones here at TV and in one of the links below Steve, Double Helix, explains his research about it.

http://tomatoville.com/showthread.ph...light=filipino

http://tomatoville.com/showthread.ph...light=filipino

http://tomatoville.com/showthread.ph...ight=nagcarlan

The above in no particular order.

Carolyn

Carolyn,
You have been helpful to me since I first started growing OP seeds and posting to GW circa 2008. I don't have you in mind when I use the term "elitist tomato nerd". If you were elitist you wouldn't respond to as many newbie questions as I have seen you answer over the years. Tomato nerd? Yes, as am I. However, not in the same class. As an English major and liberal arts guy that avoided hard science until flight school, my knowledge of tomato genetics is limited to little more than "PL is recessive". So, much respect to you for being able to say specifically why tomatoes do what they do.
I did read the links you posted but nothing really addressed the stability of Nagcarlang. I think the bulk of evidence points to it not being stable unless someone has taken the time to personally walk it through F6.

[tomatoaddict]

Interesting. I came across this thread searching for info about Jim Dandy. A variety a customer said they were growing. I was looking at my seed inventory and I have listed "Jumbo Jim PL" but I have no idea where I got it or how old it is. I wasn't so good at dating things in the beginning which makes me think it's older. Good info.

[OldHondaNut]

I can tell you first hand that I tried to de-hybrid Bush Big Boy after Burpee removed it from its offerings about 5 years ago. It was unsuccessful and after a bit of work I consider it 100% a waste of time. Add to it the fact that last year they brought it back and I bought 160 seeds which is about 40 years worth. Looks like it is still there but a word to the wise: If you like your hybrid, keep it yourself. They come and go so often it can make your head spin.

I germinate 10 year old seeds that I DON'T take care of. These are in the fridge and should last much longer.

They have never kept me from planting my OP heirlooms, just saying...

[zero244]

This is my first post.........it took weeks to get verified hopefully after I make this post I will be able to view photos.
This year I am growing 14 plants and 8 different strains. In the past I've grown whatever was sold at the nursery which meant nothing but hybrids though that is changing.
But I finally saw the light and discovered heirloom and open pollinated varieties.
I doubt I will ever buy or grow anything else. I am growing one Monsanto hybrid called Tye Dye just out of curiosity.
My tomato interest is about 50\50 indeterminate and bush dwarf strains.
The various seed exchanges and the USDA are doing wonders to preserve the older OP varieties.
I don't necessarily mind having to buy seeds every year like you have to do with the hybrids, but in most cases the flavor is missing when your compare hybrids vs OP strains.
I haven't bought a store bought tomato in over 15 months. I grew a 506 Bush tomato indoors this past winter under HID lighting and was amazed how much better it tasted over any store bought tomato.
I just wished I would of discovered this years ago instead of wasting my time growing Celebrity and Early Girl etc.

[travis]

You say Tye Dye is a Monsanto product? I thought it was a Burpee development.

[Fusion_power]

Travis, Tye Dye as sold by Burpee was developed by Doug Heath when he worked for Seminis/Monsanta. He used LA2533 as a source for a late blight tolerant gene. I have not seen confirmation, but suspect that it is ph3.

[travis]

Thank you, Fusion. Interesting information to consider.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Travis, Tye Dye as sold by Burpee was developed by Doug Heath when he worked for Seminis/Monsanta. He used LA2533 as a source for a late blight tolerant gene. I have not seen confirmation, but suspect that it is ph3.

Then why did Burpee name it Tye Dye, the same name that Brad Gates had developed and was selling seeds for it at the same time.?

I remember that there were many here who wote to Burpee about that, very upset, but I don't remember if anyone posted any responses or even if Burpee responded.

Bill ?

Until quite recently Burpee had contracted out to Petoseed for development of what they wanted and they had the right to name those new ones anything they wanted to.

I know that Burpee has recently started a breeding program in Buck's County,PA.their headquarters,but the Tye Dye stuff was quite a few years ago.

Petoseed has been a part of Seminis ever since Monsanto bought Seminis so I'm going to assume that Heath worked for Petoseed on contract to Burpee.

Carolyn

[Fusion_power]

Travis, if you would like a bit more info, look up patent 5,866,764 in the U.S. patent office files. Summarizing, they found high resistance to late blight in LA2533 and introgressed it into a cultivated tomato background. Unfortunately, they didn't identify the gene and they didn't make crosses to known ph2 (West Virginia 63) and ph3 (NC1 Celebr) containing lines to see if the resistance is identical or unique. When I called Doug Heath, I specifically asked if it was ph3 and he replied that he did not know for sure at that time. Since then, I've been told that he stated to at least one person that it was probably ph3, but this is NOT confirmed.

I am growing Tye Dye this year with the specific purpose of crossing it to Lucky Cross. I'd love to see Lucky Cross flavor in a late blight tolerant tomato.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Travis, if you would like a bit more info, look up patent 5,866,764 in the U.S. patent office files. Summarizing, they found high resistance to late blight in LA2533 and introgressed it into a cultivated tomato background. Unfortunately, they didn't identify the gene and they didn't make crosses to known ph2 (West Virginia 63) and ph3 (NC1 Celebr) containing lines to see if the resistance is identical or unique. When I called Doug Heath, I specifically asked if it was ph3 and he replied that he did not know for sure at that time. Since then, I've been told that he stated to at least one person that it was probably ph3, but this is NOT confirmed.

I am growing Tye Dye this year with the specific purpose of crossing it to Lucky Cross. I'd love to see Lucky Cross flavor in a late blight tolerant tomato.

I think most of you know that my knowledge of tomato genetics is lacking, compared to most of you, but I still have questions.

Fusion, so far I'm following you about Tye Dye, but I am curious to know if Doug Heath is with Petoseed, specifically. I'm curious b'c I'd like to know if Petoseed is still doing most of the breeding for Burpee, or if they are getting anything out of their own breeding program.

And still curious b'c for the past several years, for reasons unknown, I've been sent an invitation by Burpee to attend some kind of conference at their headquarters about new varieties,perhaps a show and tell.

I once had several productive phone chats with George Ball who was the one who told me how John Peto left Burpee, took seeds for Teddy Jones, the one parent of Big boy F1, with him when he went to CA and started Petoseed.

And I still want to get back to my original question here about what defines an F1 hybrid, in terms of the degree of heterozygosity. Yes, I know that many hybrids have gene pairs/alleles, that are homozygous, but I've always been curious about Santa F1 plants showing offtypes, which is not the same as some F1's giving what I call mule plants which are much larger than the regular F1 and have no buds, no blossoms, no nothing and could be IDed in the tomato fields of my farmer friend Charlie.

So I'm hoping that someone here will address my above question, as in there must be something that defines an F1 hybrid other than it's just a cross of two OP's for the earliest ones bred and many more parental inputs for more modern ones where there are two separate breeding lines leading to the last two OP's in each line being crossed.

Give me a break, if you will, since I'll be 75 this month and my curiousity is what helps my brain to keep functiong.

Carolyn

[Baizanator]

I will say this. I have some of Bill Jeffers Big Cheef F6 seeds and this plant is just amazing. Super consistent and all around awesome.

[Fusion_power]

To the best of my knowledge, Doug Heath is no longer employed with Seminis. They had a big shakeup about 2 years ago. I know this because I am in contact with one of the people he worked with.

Re what defines an F1 hybrid, it is better to look at it from the reverse position by asking how consanguinous the genes are in a given plant.

Consanguinity - kinship characterized by the sharing of common ancestors

The more closely related two parents are, the more genes are identical. In a typical open pollinated tomato, the genes approach 100% identical but never quite reach it because random mutations occur at a small but significant rate. When a tomato plant is in this condition, the seed produced by a plant is almost a clone of the parent plant. The level of vigor and production and disease tolerance is entirely decided by whatever genes are present with little or no possibility of heterosis.

The polar opposite would be two plants that are so far differentiated that genetic barriers prevent reproduction. This is the case between tomato and potato for example in that they share 98% of their genes, but the differences are so great that a tomato cannot successfully reproduce in a cross.

In between these extremes are plants that can successfully cross and reproduce though various levels of difficulty can occur. Within the tomato family, S. Habrochaites is a very interesting plant. It is more cold tolerant, more stress tolerant, more disease tolerant, and more adaptable than cultivated tomato. Unfortunately, S. Habrochaites makes nasty smelling and tasting small greenish/white fruit on a plant that stinks. What if you could bring some of those good traits over into a commercial tomato? Well, this can be done, but with the condition that the domestic tomato must be the female parent in the cross. Collect pollen from S. Habrochaites, dust it on the stigma of S. Lycopersicum and the resulting seed will be an F1 hybrid. The level of genetic difference is very high and though they share common ancestors, they are at least so different that very high levels of heterosis can occur. The plants grown from the seed in this cross are useless for producing edible tomatoes, but they can make outstandingly good rootstocks for grafting tomatoes.

What about making F1 hybrids between two S. Lycopersicum varieties? They are in the same species and generally will be 100% cross compatible. The problem is that the domestic tomato has an extremely shallow genetic base. The number of plants that were domesticated from S. Pimpinellifolium contained only a small amount of the genetic variation in the parent species. This limits the amount of heterosis that can be expressed in any cross. So if I cross a heart shaped variety like Anna Russian ("el" gene) with a beefsteak ("f" fasciated gene) it will produce fruit that are fat hearts such as Tastiheart.

So what level of genetic difference makes an F1? A better way to ask is how much heterosis - the increase in growth, size, fecundity, function, yield, or other characters in hybrids over those of the parents - will be produced by a cross. While there are no absolute rules, the more different the two parents, the more likely their offspring will exhibit heterosis and the more alike two parents, the less likely their offspring will be exceptional.

Now it is easy to see why with tomatoes you can do all kinds of funky things with shape and size and color, but it is very difficult to get a plant to express heterosis. When crosses are made to wild species, heterosis can be extremely intense. This is why Maxifort rootstock is a cross of one wild species variety and one domestic tomato variety. Heterosis turns the resulting plant into a powerhouse as a rootstock.

[meslgh]

Hey Fusion, I am mostly following what you are saying (I think). When you talk about heterosis, is that the same thing as saying heterozygosity? Or maybe, a distinct phenotype due to heterozygosity?

And, are the el and f genes at the same locus?

[Fusion_power]

Heterosis is the change in performance caused by a plant being highly heterozygous. One way of looking at this is to use the word "synergy". I like to describe synergy as the time that 2+2=5. Heterosis is similar in producing an effect greater than the sum of the genetic parts.

f is on chromosome 11. I do not know for sure which chromosome el is on, but suspect it is not on chromosome 11 since it was so easy to combine el and f in Tastiheart. In other words, if they were both on the same chromosome, there would have been problems breeding a variety with both genes.

[Fusion_power]

I dug around for a while and found Doug Heath working for Bejo seeds as principal tomato breeder. Just so you will know he is still in the industry and working on tomatoes.

If you read the blog below, you will find several references to a super sweet orange cherry and/or grape tomato. I expect to see something interesting come from it in the near future. It is very high carotene and brix in the range of 12 to 15.

http://portraitofafarm.blogspot.com/...-monsanto.html