Joseph's Tomato Experiments

[loulac]

Glad to hear from Joseph again.
It's refreshing to see that the quoted article comes from Spain, a UE country. where he industry is trying to stifle non-certified tomatoes. Resistance seems to be quite strong among scientists.

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by loulac

Glad to hear from Joseph again.
It's refreshing to see that the quoted article comes from Spain, a UE country. where he industry is trying to stifle non-certified tomatoes. Resistance seems to be quite strong among scientists.

Loulac,I'm pretty sure that Spain chose not to be part of the EU,see below,since it was not mandatory that all eligible countries join. But what I'm posting below is a different issue of selling seeds.

I get my Spanish varieties from Ilex here at Tville, and he has been selling his varieties,not just tomatoes,via the SSE Annual Yearbook and here's what he had to say in the 2017 Yearbook;

(I'm focusing more and more on distributing Spanish varieties as they are mostly unknown and in real danger because of cultural reasons and stupid laws.)

Translate,Spain is NOT part of the EU,so he cannot sell seeds in Spain.

Another person from Spain is well known,his name is Baikal,he lives on the island of Mallorca, a Spanish Island and both Vladimir ( Czech Republic) and Gerardo( Mexico and S CAL)have been getting seeds from him directly.

Well actually I get my seeds directly from
Ilex, not via the SSE Yearbook b/c by now he knows what I prefer and will select and send those to me.

Carolyn

[joseph]

Thanks for the kind words regarding the audio recorded at the seed summit. Wow, what a life changing experience for me!

I continued working on a bunch of experiments that are really exciting to me regarding turning tomatoes into a self-incompatible population, like tomatillos, so that every seed will automatically be a new F1 hybrid every growing season. There is a lot more to write about than I can fit into one post, so here's a teaser of one project I worked on. It isn't related to any of my breeding goals, it just happened on a lark.

There was a day last winter, while I was working on the promiscuous pollination project, and doing manual pollinations, when the only pollen, and available mother were of cultivars that were unrelated to the promiscuous pollination project. So I made a cross anyway: [Brad X Yellow Pear]. Brad is tied in first place as the earliest tomato that I grow. It is: saladette, indeterminate, potato-leaved, speckled, red. I grew the F1 overwinter, and planted 72 F2 plants in late spring. They produced a wide variety of different sorts of tomatoes: potato-leaved, regular-leaved, yellow or red fruits shaped as cherry, pear, or saladette.

Here's a few photos of what they looked like. I saved bulk seed into a population that I am calling Chariot. If germination is good, I expect to list it in my seed catalog.


Here's what the earliest picking looked like: Each column of fruits is the first harvest from a single plant.


I saved the yellow saladettes as a separate population, because I want to work more with yellow fruited tomatoes than with red. I think yellow tomatoes taste better.


There were so many tomatoes from 72 plants, that I took lots to the farmer's market.

[PhilaGardener]

Fabulous looking tomatoes, Joseph !

[Worth1]

According to the original definition or intent of landrace in (1908?) there is no such thing as a landrace corn/maize.
It was completely man made starting around 9,000 years ago or at least that is the oldest sample of it found so far.
It still to this day baffles me as to how and why they did it and it does many other people to.
No one seems to agree just what plants it came from.
One of the most important crops ever developed on earth.
And the most important ever developed in the Americas.
Then even more astounding they some how came of with
nixtamalization to make it nutritious

Worth

[clkeiper]

Originally Posted by Worth1

According to the original definition or intent of landrace in (1908?) there is no such thing as a landrace corn/maize.
It was completely man made starting around 9,000 years ago or at least that is the oldest sample of it found so far.
It still to this day baffles me as to how and why they did it and it does many other people to.
No one seems to agree just what plants it came from.
One of the most important crops ever developed on earth.
And the most important ever developed in the Americas.
Then even more astounding they some how came of with
nixtamalization to make it nutritious

Worth

probably a total disaster and eating it meant survival... you weren't out anything to to eat it if that was all there was to eat? death by starvation or
maybe death by eating the unknown?

[Worth1]

Originally Posted by clkeiper

probably a total disaster and eating it meant survival... you weren't out anything to to eat it if that was all there was to eat? death by starvation or
maybe death by eating the unknown?

I have more thoughts on the subject but will put it some place else even though it has everything to do with what Joseph is doing.
Worth

[Hatgirl]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

Loulac,I'm pretty sure that Spain chose not to be part of the EU,see below,since it was not mandatory that all eligible countries join.

*snip*

Translate,Spain is NOT part of the EU,so he cannot sell seeds in Spain.

Carolyn

Spain is part of the European Union and has been since 1986 :-)

https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries_en

[BigVanVader]

Amazing work Joseph. You inspired me to start a landrace melon. I planted 12 varieties (hybrids & ops) this year All together. Next year I plan to scatter sow the thousands of seeds I saved plus add your landrace melons to the mix. I'm aiming for a melon that I can scatter sow and harvest. No watering, fertilizing or spraying. Essentially a care free melon. Small vines would also be great. Keep up the good work brother!

[joseph]

BigVanVader:

Thanks. I used to feel guilty about not weeding my garden very often. Now I call it a desirable thing: Something that a plant breeder should do for best performance. Don't be surprised if your see the term "Scatter-sow" show up in my writings. I love the idea!

[BigVanVader]

I'm with you on that, weeding is not something I enjoy. I'm curious if you have melon seeds ready? I'd like to get some asap, last season I waited to long and they were sold out.

[joseph]

I finished cleaning the muskmelon seed today, and started germination testing. There is gobs of seed, divided between 4 lots, so here's hoping that they pass the CQ check. I'll know in a few days.

[joseph]

I grew F1 hybrids last summer that had domestic tomatoes as the mother, and Solanum habrochaites as the pollen donor. There were 4 different domestic tomatoes to which LA1777 was the pollen donor. Here's what the fruits looked like. These are part of my beautifully promiscuous tomato project.

[dustdevil]

Since you're not big on eating tomatoes, did anybody eat any of these to check for taste? Many of these look like they were harvested late in your season...

[joseph]

Originally Posted by dustdevil

Since you're not big on eating tomatoes, did anybody eat any of these to check for taste? Many of these look like they were harvested late in your season...

The photo was taken July 5th. So early in the growing season. These were F1 hybrid fruits They didn't develop much color even when fully ripe. I tasted them with a local plant breeder pal. Some of them were really great for sweetness, fruitiness, and aroma. Others were bleck. It looks very possible to find a variety that tastes wonderfully fruity, instead of tasting like a tomato.

The F2 generation was planted late. I harvested green fruits just before frost. They ripened on the counter and also produced seeds. Some of the F2 fruits were larger diameter. They had 4 locules instead of 2. This summer I'm intending to plant out larger populations of F2 seeds of different crosses. Also have some F3 seed to plant out.

F2: Fern X LA1777