Any reason for this?

[organichris]

Of course, I don't know anything about crossing tomatoes, so I come up with these questions in my mind and have to present them even though they might not make any sense.

Would there be any reason for using the blossoms from two plants of the same variety for pollination? In other words, let's say you have two Cherokee Purple plants and you use the pollen from one to pollinate the other. Is this every practiced? If so, for what reason(s)?

[Stepheninky]

Since it is genetically fixed a CP x CP will still be a CP so other than to help insure pollination there would be no reason I could dream up to do it. The electric toothbrush would be a better choice for that task.

Now if you make a cross and grow that out you could do sib crossings with the F# generations as the traits would not be fixed, or even a parent CP X to CP x Something else in order to try and pick up more of the CP traits.

Hope that answer is not confusing

[organichris]

Originally Posted by Stepheninky

...Hope that answer is not confusing

It sorta was. You have to remember I grew up in the woods.



But I think I understand. For instance, you cross a CP with a BW and then you backcross the F1 (or whatever generation) to CP. Is that what you meant?

[travis]

If I had a really large population of one heirloom variety, and within that population of plants there were two that showed outstanding qualities compared to all the others, I might cross pollinate between those two plants just to gamble on combining genetics that might be unique to those two plants. Or to combine genetics that were unique to each plant thence into a single germplasm.

I'm not saying that all the genes in each of those two plants would be different than the genes in any other plants within the population, or even that there would be substantial variations within the genetic structure. Just saying there may be some stray genetics found in a few plants within a large population of the same variety which you might want to double down on so to speak.

And yes, I am saying there is some drift within an open pollinated variety when seeds are saved from random and unbagged source fruit. So, in fact, there always is a chance you'll find a couple of remarkable plants standing out in a crowd of brothers and sisters.

[organichris]

Originally Posted by travis

If I had a really large population of one heirloom variety, and within that population of plants there were two that showed outstanding qualities compared to all the others, I might cross pollinate between those two plants just to gamble on combining genetics that might be unique to those two plants. Or to combine genetics that were unique to each plant thence into a single germplasm.

I'm not saying that all the genes in each of those two plants would be different than the genes in any other plants within the population, or even that there would be substantial variations within the genetic structure. Just saying there may be some stray genetics found in a few plants within a large population of the same variety which you might want to double down on so to speak.

And yes, I am saying there is some drift within an open pollinated variety when seeds are saved from random and unbagged source fruit. So, in fact, there always is a chance you'll find a couple of remarkable plants standing out in a crowd of brothers and sisters.

That's sort of where I was going with the question. Thanks.