Blossom End Rot

[AKmark]

When I have got it, I found that BER usually goes away as the season progresses if watering is tight. What variety always gets BER, I want to try it? I am not sure about some of the above statements about it not being preventable, I am seeing the opposite.

[Fusion_power]

the one thing that surprises me over and over again is how reluctant people are to cull

You can say that at the top of your lungs. It is an inherent human trait that causes all kinds of problems when it comes to selective adaptation of genetics.

By the way, I spell it "foetid". Must be a southern thing.



While many posts are critical of Josephs position, he is practicing "survival of the fittest" in the most extreme form. It is by far the most effective strategy to move genetics in a direction of maximum effectiveness.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

You can say that at the top of your lungs. It is an inherent human trait that causes all kinds of problems when it comes to selective adaptation of genetics.

By the way, I spell it "foetid". Must be a southern thing.



While many posts are critical of Josephs position, he is practicing "survival of the fittest" in the most extreme form. It is by far the most effective strategy to move genetics in a direction of maximum effectiveness.

Darrel, just pointing out that it's BER and tomatoes we're talking about as you know and in the link I gave above to idig, both Keith Mueller and myself agreed that with BER one cannot seperate any BER genes acting alone, from environmenatl influences, and I gave several examples.

So it's difficult for me to see how genetics alone can be moved in the direction of maximum effetiveness, without appreciating the fact that weather in any one season, and all the other variables can influence the appearance of BER.

And the whole area of epigenetics where a particular gene can make a product that can sit on a specific gene and turn it off from transcription, or turn it on, has really complicated the issue although I find it fascinating.

Carolyn

No BER in my garden this year. Most years, I have a lot early in the spring immediately following a heavy rain. My most susceptible variety is JD's Special C Tex. The early set tomatoes on JD's normally are lost to BER, but not this year. My other black varieties rarely have BER even growing right next to JD's.

Ted

[Fusion_power]

Yes, blossom end rot has a genetic basis and a very distinctive interaction with environment. Commercial tomatoes as we grow them all show signs of BER under some conditions. I have a couple of crosses with wild species that never show BER under any conditions whatsoever. They are among the varieties that I am sending Joseph to trial next year. Other factors may wind up eliminating them from his trials, but BER will not.

Joseph's position as an absolutist has a lot of negatives, but keep in mind that he has exactly 3 lines of tomatoes that consistently produce a crop in his environment. He can't grow any of the thousands of varieties that you or I grow. This allows him to be a bit more discriminating about what genetics he allows in his plantings.

1. No varieties that take more than 90 days from seed to mature fruit or 120 days to all fruit on the plant mature.
2. No varieties with thin skin
3. No varieties that show excessive damaged fruit from soil contact
4. No varieties that get BER.

With criteria like that, I'd be reduced to just a few varieties too. I would be searching diligently to find any diverse genetics that could help my chosen few survive and produce better. This sounds like what Joseph is doing.

[joseph]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

both Keith Mueller and myself agreed that with BER one cannot seperate any BER genes acting alone, from environmenatl influences

"If I could discover the magical anti-BER gene then I could make a fortune by patenting it and selling it". In the real farming world (as differentiated from the academic world) there may be 10 or 30 or more genes involved in making cultivars more susceptible to BER. They may be traits as diverse as the diamater of the veins, or how the roots absorb salts, or under what conditions the stomatas open, or which chemicals are disolved in the sap, or whether the fruits are shaded by foliage, or the shape of the fruits. Each gene involved in BER contributes a bit of susceptibility to BER or a bit of resistance to it. When all the positive and negative traits are summed together you get tomato families that rarely get BER, and families in which it is horrible, and everything in-between. Just because we can't name one BER gene acting alone doesn't mean that BER is not genetically driven. In my world view BER is genetically driven because genetics are the only rational way to explain differences in susceptibility between tomato varieties...

If current economic conditions continue for a few more years we may well be able to isolate enough QTL genes to be able to breed a large fruited domestic tomato that will never get BER under any environmental conditions.

BER seems to be associated with fruits growing faster than the plant is able to supply nutrients... Ain't that clever??? In my garden if a fruit is going to mature in the available growing seaon it has to be a smallish fruit (maxing out at about 8 ounces -- 6 ounces is better). I suspect that by selecting against BER I am also selecting for smaller tomatoes that don't have to grow so fast. Or is it the other way around? By selecting for smaller tomatoes I am selecting against BER... Whatever. I feel better about growing tomatoes when I throw away fewer rotting fruits.


---

Annals of Botany 95: 571–581, 2005

INVITED REVIEW

A Cellular Hypothesis for the Induction of Blossom-End Rot in Tomato Fruit

LIM C. HO and PHILIP J . WHITE*

Warwick HRI, Wellesbourne, Warwick CV35 9EF, UK

"there is a clear genetic influence in the susceptibility of different
cultivars to BER (Brooks, 1914; Maynard et al., 1957; Greenleaf and Adams, 1969; Adams and Ho, 1992; Ho et al., 1995; Sperry et al., 1996; Cuartero and Ferna´ndez-Mu~noz, 1999). Plum tomatoes are more susceptible to BER than round tomatoes, and no BER is ever observed in cherry tomatoes (Ho, 1998a)."

[joseph]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

By the way, I spell it "foetid". Must be a southern thing.

Too bad I've blotted her name out of my memory. Guess I'll never be able to find her to ask if she was quibbling over whether it should be spelled the southern way or the other way.

I had read 10,000 books before I graduated from high school. Makes it hard to remember which author first exposed me to fetid. It's definitely not a word in common usage in my village. Around here with the lack of swamps the only foetid thing are the cow manure lagoons, and we typically just call them "stinky".

[joseph]

There is a great research project begging to be done regarding BER... A crowd-sourced database of BER suseptibility. The end result could be displayed as a simple percentage... Averaged over all gardens, and all years, and all environments, and all growing conditions, what percent of each cultivar could be expected to develop BER. Celebrity might score around 5% while some of the Roma cultivars might score 80%.

[Fusion_power]

fetid and foetid are both accepted spellings. Both mean stinky.

10,000 books in 12 years is 830 or so books per year or about 2.5 books per day. I'm not quibbling or disagreeing, but it sounds a bit far fetched. My average was probably about 350 books per year or about 4000 books before I graduated high school.

There was a standing bet you could pick any book in the school library and odds were it would have my name in the back.

[cythaenopsis]

I think this is really fascinating. I like to imagine how tomato plants grow in the wild. They have much rougher conditions than under human care, because we actively try to help the plant optimize its output. Left to its own devices a tomato plant in the wild can be sorely unproductive.... but then, its only concern is propagation of the species. One fruit can result in many more plants if dropped in a serendipitous place. If it can put out at least a dozen or more tomatoes, that's a bonus. But the hope is that it isn't alone to begin with. Some plants won't produce anything and die off prematurely due to various diseases.

So yes, our attempts to help tomato plants grow optimally can be out of balance in some way that ends up triggering BER. Natural adaptation and mutation (luck of the draw) might end up creating strong BER resistant fruit, but nature can't quite match the human mind and its ability to optimize in a shorter period of time. I think Joseph's endeavor is worthwhile, albeit extreme and possibly losing plants that would avoid BER under typical circumstances. But sometimes extreme measures are needed to achieve a guarantee and I hope one day to read about him achieving an anti-BER tomato plant that tastes just as good as its cousins.

[lavanta]

I don't believe in the genetic trait reasoning. I get one, and only one, BR tomato on the the plant and I don't get another one at all, all season long on the same plant. How do you explain that!

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by lavanta

I don't believe in the genetic trait reasoning. I get one, and only one, BR tomato on the the plant and I don't get another one at all, all season long on the same plant. How do you explain that!

I think the best answer is embedded in the following paragraph that comes from my earlier post:

(Many folks add Ca++ and then see that BER disappears. What they fail to realize is that BER is going to go away anyway, as the season progresses. And that's because as the plants get larger they are better able to handle the many stresses that can induce it. So one cannot correlate addition of Ca++ to disappearance of BER. Universities have done so many stidies on this already
because BER is a billion dollar problem in the commercial veggie industry.)

BER usually appears on the earliest fruits and then usually goes away as plants mature and can better handle all the stresses that are involved with BER.

And I think that's exactly what happened with your one plant.

How many plants do you grow in a season and how many do show BER early in the season?

If you look at the preceding posts many of them do indicate a genetic factor, such as the huge susceptibility to BER by true paste varieties and also my describing what happens when plants are under water.

So quite a few of us are convinced that BER is genetic, the details not known,accompanied by enviromental variables.

Hope that helps,and I sure wish I only got one BER fruit on a sinlge plant.

Carolyn

[peekers]

Since grafting with commercially available rootstock I have yet to see any BER. Of course the root system on these rootstocks are so incredibly vigorous it wouldn't be expected.

[joseph]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

So quite a few of us are convinced that BER is genetic, the details not known, accompanied by enviromental variables.

I agree completely.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by peekers

Since grafting with commercially available rootstock I have yet to see any BER. Of course the root system on these rootstocks are so incredibly vigorous it wouldn't be expected.

Peekers,I'm not sure I see the connection between a vigorous root system, which you attribute to the rootstock you're using, and BER, since almost any variety I've grown , about 4,000 varieties to date, have also had vigorous root systems.

What am I missing here?

Uptake of Ca++ via the roots is not the major problem,unless the soil has none, which is rare,it's the distribution within the plant that's theproblem, and there are many factors that influence that.

Carolyn