Tomatoes for Dummies

[Alpinejs]

I haven't found that book yet at Amazon.com, so could someone answer
a couple questions for this Dummie.

First, what is the difference among mutation, strain and cross-breed?

Second, I understand how an OP breeds true, but I don't understand
how a seed co. gets seed for hybrids (i.e. Early Girl or Sungold). Do they have a whole
string of ancestors in various stages of cross-breeding with an end product
always being the targeted species? I don't get it.

Thanks for any tutorial provided.

[lakelady]

I asked that question about strains in this thread, hope it helps. The rest I'll leave to the experts, but I think some of your questions could be answered in this thread:

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...ghlight=Strain

[dice]

Selection methods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selecti...f_reproduction

Page 2 of this .pdf document shows how different parent cultivars and
selections were crossed to produce the cultivar West Virginia '63 (which
is open-pollenated, but if they had stopped at one of the F1 stages,
they would have had a hybrid which could be reproduced if the immediate
parents had been grown out to stable OPs before making that last cross):
http://anr.ext.wvu.edu/r/download/51436

A rather good book on doing this in practice (for more than just
tomatoes):
http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/361

[nancyruhl]

What about Alpinejs part of the question about hybrids. How do seed companies go about getting mass production of hybrid seeds?

[dice]

How do seed companies go about getting mass production of hybrid seeds?

If the last two parents are genetically stable ("open pollenated"), then
they can cross them any time and get the same hybrid seeds again.

These days, they could probably propagate the plants that produced the
hybrid seeds with cuttings, too. Then they do not have to redo the cross,
the seeds can simply be reproduced each year from clones of the same
exact plants. I do not know if that would be practical for seed wholesalers,
though.