2013 breeding garden

[FishMato]

I started the seeds for my breeding garden today. This will be my first major attempt at cross breeding tomatoes.
Tomato varieties I have:
Abe Lincoln
Cherokee Purple
Black Krim
Brandywine
Box Car Willie
Aunt Ruby's German Green
German Johnson
Big Rainbow
One of my main crosses this season will be Cherokee Purple x Black Krim. I like the sweet smokiness of the Cherokee and the salty of the Krim and am interested to see what traits the offspring will have. I will keep updating as I make progress.

[goodwin]

Nice selection of varieties. There is a potato-leaved version of Cherokee Purple which might simplify things.
Let us know how it goes.

Lee

[FishMato]

Thanks. Do you know of any seed sources for the potato leaved variety?

[goodwin]

Sandhill carries it, I think. I'm sure I have some seed as well. You can PM me.

Lee

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by goodwin

Sandhill carries it, I think. I'm sure I have some seed as well. You can PM me.

Lee

I just checked Glenn's ( Sandhill) paper catalog and he doesn't list it, just the RL original version.

I know I have Indian Stripe with both leaf forms but right now can't remember if I have CP as a PL.

Ah the mind, I'll be 74 in June, and am pretty good at remembering this and that, but far from perfect.

Fish, I'm one who has never tasted anything salty at all with Black Krim or any other so called black, same for the smokiness that some say they taste.

Carolyn

[goodwin]

hi Carolyn,

I think Glenn listed it at SSE a few years ago. Perhaps I got it as a bonus from Sandhill.
This PL variant may have appeared several times, because I remember Bill Malin here in NM had a version and Jere at Baker Creek said it showed up in his field as well. Perhaps you or someone else here knows the timeline.
Always good to hear from you. The PL Indian Stripe you sent me last season turned out great - healthy plant and earlier, better production than CP.

Lee

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by goodwin

hi Carolyn,

I think Glenn listed it at SSE a few years ago. Perhaps I got it as a bonus from Sandhill.
This PL variant may have appeared several times, because I remember Bill Malin here in NM had a version and Jere at Baker Creek said it showed up in his field as well. Perhaps you or someone else here knows the timeline.
Always good to hear from you. The PL Indian Stripe you sent me last season turned out great - healthy plant and earlier, better production than CP.

Lee

Yes Bill Malin was first with his Spudakee, and then Jere with his Cherokee Purple Potato Leaf.

And I know several who grew out those two PLUS regular Cherokee Purple and there was no clear conclusion as to whether either of the PL ones were the same as the original RL one except for leaf form.

Different persons growing them in different areas in different seasons, etc.

Which is why with the Orange Minsk Heart, even if I'd had enough seeds that first year I wanted it regrown to see if it would still be a heart, and it was, so I listed it.

What bothers me so much, and here I go again,is many folks thinking that a PL version of an origial RL is the same except for leaf form.

It was Keith Muller who remined me that there's more than one way that an RL goes to PL that is not the result of a single spontaneous mutation. Those DNA mechanisms being repeats,inversions and looping out, which I knew from work with bacteria but never thought to transfer that info to tomato DNA, and anyof them can affect MORE than one trait at one time.

Lately I've seen a couple of folks who have talked about a PL going to an RL. Can't be a single spontaneous mutation b'c the statistical chance of the exact same gene being reversed is astronomical.

So I think most of those PL to RL's are the result of cross pollination or stray seeds.

Carolyn

[Fusion_power]

So I think most of those PL to RL's are the result of cross pollination or stray seeds.

Precisely.

DarJones

[goodwin]

I'd agree that a spontaneous change back to RL has a vanishingly small probablility.
It's my understanding that the PL trait usually involves a deletion that affects growth regulators at the leaf edge.
Other than that, the plant is unchanged.
I've grown RL and PL versions side-by-side, and they were similar in other respects, such as plant size, fruit set and maturity,
Lee

[swamper]

Good to see your focus is on tomatoes with great flavor. So many are playing around with colors, stripes, and shapes and seem to not care as much about flavor. It will be interesting to hear what you and others think taste best among your selections and their offspring. Good luck and be prepared to grow a lot of f2s f3s etc looking for that rare individual that stands out.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by goodwin

I'd agree that a spontaneous change back to RL has a vanishingly small probablility.
It's my understanding that the PL trait usually involves a deletion that affects growth regulators at the leaf edge.
Other than that, the plant is unchanged.
I've grown RL and PL versions side-by-side, and they were similar in other respects, such as plant size, fruit set and maturity,
Lee

Lee, you said something above I'd never heard before and that's that a deletion of a gene, in this case the PL gene, affects growth regulators at the leaf edge.

when a spontaneous mutation occurs the gene is not deleted, but one of the nucleotides in that gene gets changed so that the reading frame going from DNA to messenger RNA is messed up and can' tbe translated into protein for that gene. Sometimes a snippet of it can be, but still, no function at all.

So I'm having a hard time understanding how a spontaneous mutation in one gene could affect growth regulators in another gene.

There are what are called pleiotropic genes where one gene can affect many other genes, but they are very rare/ One great example is the variety Lutescent, nee Honor Bright.

Just b'c I'm curious, do you remember where you read that?

Carolyn

[Fusion_power]

A "deletion" means that a part of a gene is deleted during transcription. There are also substitutions, additions, transpositions, translocations, transposons, reversals, segment deletions, and segment insertions. The mutations (5 are known) that cause failure of chlorophyll to break down in mature fruit are each different deletions or substitutions in one single gene. The result is five different mutations, but there is only one phenotype, i.e. black tomatoes.

Pleiotropic genes are common. For example, the mutation that produces pink fruit is pleiotropic. It affects the skin color, flavor, and carotene bio-pathways. Several of the disease tolerance genes are pleiotropic.

Is the uniform green gene ipleiotropic since it affects fruit color and sugar synthesis? My answer would be a considered no since both fruit color and sugar synthesis are in a single bio pathway. the ug gene causes chlorophyll not to accumulate in the fruit resulting in reduced photosynthesis and therefore less sugar. In other words, two different phenotypic traits are caused by a single genetic variant.

DarJones

[FishMato]

I'm definitely planning to go to at least f4 to find a really unique or special plant. None of my seeds have sprouted yet but they were just put in the soil about three days ago.

[ChrisK]

Deletion usually refers to a missing segment of some length in the chromosome.

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

A "deletion" means that a part of a gene is deleted during transcription.

DarJones

[goodwin]

It came up in something I was reading a while back on leaf morphology - a bit dense, but worth digging through if you are interested.
http://www.plantcell.org/content/23/10/3595.full
The research is fairly recent (2011)

Lee