[QUOTE=bower;401454]'Del', 'Beta', 'at', 'sh'.[/QUOTE]

Have you heard of any generally available varieties with these mutations?

So far, I've only got "Caro-rich" in my list as having 'Beta'/'B'. I've read about the others, but haven't found any variety names.

[QUOTE=Darren Abbey;401474]Have you heard of any generally available varieties with these mutations?

So far, I've only got "Caro-rich" in my list as having 'Beta'/'B'. I've read about the others, but haven't found any variety names.[/QUOTE]


Another Beta variety called "Caro-Red" is named in this research on the competitive interaction of Del and Beta:
[URL]http://www.genetics.org/content/56/2/227.full.pdf[/URL]

here is a nice variety from victory seeds with high Beta/B. [url]http://www.victoryseeds.com/tomato_podorok-fei.html[/url]

A practical way to distinguish Beta orange from tangerine or apricot is that the Beta F1 cross to red or yellow fruit will be orange red, while the F1 cross of tangerine or apricot will be red.
For Beta vs tangerine, the segregating yellow cross rr should be easy to tell apart, since Beta is completely masked by rr ie the fruit is yellow, while yellow- tangerine rrtt is a pale orange color.
I guess I'll be watching for the colour of my Zolotoe Serdtse F1's, especially with Beta turning up in another Russian variety.

[QUOTE=Darren Abbey;401474]Have you heard of any generally available varieties with these mutations?

So far, I've only got "Caro-rich" in my list as having 'Beta'/'B'. I've read about the others, but haven't found any variety names.[/QUOTE]

Jaune Flammee also has a Beta gene and is high in Beta Carotene. It appears there is variation in the Beta gene itself? (see next paragraph)

There is this presentation that doesn't have much text. It appears to being doing analysis on the Beta gene (or a promoter of the B gene?), and looking at breeding and using some sort of marker for improving selection, but given the lack of text, I'm only making inferences: [URL]http://tgc.ifas.ufl.edu/2013/2013/02%20-%20Orchard.pdf[/URL]

I have some 97L97 seeds that I got from Fusion_Power. Mine have not yet come up, so I don't know yet if I'll have enough seed to share (If they don't come up this week, I'm going to restart them.) 97L97 was a 'breeding' tomato release from the USDA if my memory serves. It still has the Beta gene tied to the determinate characteristic.

Has anyone have information on how Delta-carotene reacts in the body? Looking at some synthesis pathways I've seen recently delta is a precursor to alpha-carotene which is 1/2 as effective as beta-carotene (inferred from some reading), . However the synthesis pathways I saw I think were detailing what happens in the plant.

I've got [URL="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-0mtiZ6tCcpE/UzEi4hSwIXI/AAAAAAAAAfM/pBthrEBTxog/s1600/pigment_pathway.png"]a figure I've put together about how the carotenoids are synthesized in tomatoes[/URL], but how we animals utilize the compounds is an entirely different subject.

Part of why I was looking for variety names was for a blog post talking about the carotenoid pathway mutants : [URL="http://the-biologist-is-in.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-color-of-tomatoes.html"]http://the-biologist-is-in.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-color-of-tomatoes.html[/URL]

The list of names is more comprehensive than is used in that post, however. I may do a later post more focussed on the names of varieties with certain genes.

From the chart in the presentation you linked and the following I would conclude that delta carotene is on the pathway to lutein synthesis and never leading to beta carotene or lycopene. The Del gene might contribute to lutein in tomatoes, but at the expense of beta carotene or lycopene, according to the abstract for this paper; [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24141052"]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24141052
[/URL][B][SIZE=1]Elevation of lutein content in tomato: a biochemical tug-of-war between lycopene cyclases.[/SIZE][/B]

The Del variety used in that research is referred to as "HighDelta".


Foundation research on Del tomato crosses by Tomes:
[URL]http://www.genetics.org/content/62/4/769.full.pdf[/URL]



I haven't seen any research on biological effects of delta carotene itself, but there's a lot of research on the health benefits of lutein and bioavailability is discussed in this abstract for example: [URL="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10426704"]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10426704
[/URL]
[B][SIZE=1]Bioavailability of lutein from vegetables is 5 times higher than that of beta-carotene.[/SIZE][/B]

It's very interesting, that there are Beta 'promoters' found in different type examples. I found two articles by Francis and co-authors who are continuing to explore the additional color modifiers found in wild species, besides the classic known tomato genes/alleles.

[URL]http://journal.ashspublications.org/content/126/2/221.full.pdf+html[/URL]
Sacks and Francis (2001)

[URL]http://journal.ashspublications.org/content/129/2/250.full.pdf+html[/URL]
Kabelka Yang and Francis (2004)

Unfortunately, the "HighDelta" was one of their experimental transgenic lines and so not available for general purpose (amateur) breeding experiments.

Prolycopene is considered more bioavailable than lycopene itself, but I don't know how it relates to the more terminal carotenes.

There is some evidence out there for additional beta-carotene synthesis outside the lycopene pathway, but I haven't gathered enough information to make sense of it yet.

Thanks for the blog link, Darren, I missed your post while I was making mine. Your thread here has a lot of value to amateur breeders, though, so I hope you don't mind if we carry on. :)

I guess I shouldn't be surprised to find that Jaune Flamme has the Beta gene, since the data showed it so high in beta carotene. If JF had the tt gene, it would be prolycopene/ cis-lycopene instead, because the tt effect is dominant to the others.

Sunray is one of the high beta carotene tomatoes identified in the TreeCropsResearch.org data. I did some searching and was very surprised to find Jubilee in the pedigree which is tt tangerine. Sunray came from a cross between Jubilee and "Pan American". But Sunray's carotene profile is not what you'd expect from tt at all.

A search for Pan American turned up more information about the pedigree, which involved introgressions from wild species, in this research article on cryptic introgressions:
[URL]http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2229/12/133[/URL]

"Some of the earliest tomato introgression breeding in the US may have been done indirectly and unwittingly via the French variety Merville des Marchés. Recent phenotypic data collected for Merville des Marchés PI 109834 showed it to be variable in fruit size and smoothness ( [url]http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/acc/display.pl?1129442[/url] webcite); its genotype was segregating, showed population admixture, and was an outlier based on genetic distance relative to many other S. lycopersicum accessions [8,9]. We postulated that these were indications of S. pimpinellifolium in its ancestry (this idea was examined in the current study). The Fusarium wilt-resistant processing variety Marvel [10] was selected from Merville des Marchés in the early 1900s, and Marvel was a parent of Marglobe released in 1925 [11], which in turn can be found in the pedigree of many important varieties from the 1930s through the late 1950s (H.M. Munger’s tomato pedigree chart provided by E.D. Cobb, Cornell University, 2012). Direct introgression of tomato with wild species in the US commenced in the 1930s concurrent with collection expeditions to geographic centers of origin. The first released cultivar, developed from Marglobe x S. pimpinellifolium, was aptly named Pan American [12]."

Very interesting, but not enough to conclude whether Sunray has the beta gene or some combination of promoter genes from other wild spp.

[QUOTE=bower;401644]Thanks for the blog link, Darren, I missed your post while I was making mine. Your thread here has a lot of value to amateur breeders, though, so I hope you don't mind if we carry on. :)[/QUOTE]

No problem. I'm still gathering data and will continue participating in this discussion.
----

In my literature research, I've found evidence suggestive of an alternate pathway to synthesize beta-carotene. It isn't something that anyone seems to be studying directly, but it has turned up a few times as a relatively high beta-carotene in mutational contexts which should have interfered with its production by the well-studied pathway.

I wouldn't be surprised if "Sunray" was tt, but with a modifier that activated that alternate pathway. …at least this is a hypothetical situation that would be consistent.

I have enough 97L97 to share (not exactly sure of amount, but more than I would plant over 2 years (for a breeding plant I'm only aiming for 2 plants personally -- attempting to start 4). Darren has first dibs, but others can PM and I'll share out what I have. 5 seeds each? I'm 0 for 4 so far, just reseeded, so I can't speak for their viability.

PM me.

Chris

Chris, did you pre-treat the L. cheesmanni seeds? These and others from TGRC can be difficult or impossible to germinate without treatment, although they are viable.

I did not manage to germinate some Lycopersicoides accessions last year with ordinary treatments, (Pimpinellifolium germinated but took weeks) so this year I followed the method recommended by TGRC using half strength bleach (which is pretty extreme!), and the stubborn ones are up 4/4 this time, also as quickly as tomatoes.

Check it out if you hadn't seen it: [URL]http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/seed_germ.aspx[/URL]

[QUOTE=bower;401752]Chris, did you pre-treat the L. cheesmanni seeds? These and others from TGRC can be difficult or impossible to germinate without treatment, although they are viable.

I did not manage to germinate some Lycopersicoides accessions last year with ordinary treatments, (Pimpinellifolium germinated but took weeks) so this year I followed the method recommended by TGRC using half strength bleach (which is pretty extreme!), and the stubborn ones are up 4/4 this time, also as quickly as tomatoes.

Check it out if you hadn't seen it: [URL]http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/seed_germ.aspx[/URL][/QUOTE]

I remember hearing about this, I hadn't pursued this because I was hoping since the cheesmanni was originally crossed with 4 tomatoes and then processed through to F5 that there shouldn't be any non-standard germination barriers. I replanted 97L97 yesterday. If these don't germinate, I'll look into alternate germination methods. Thanks for the link, I'll start looking at this now.

[QUOTE=crmauch;402314]I remember hearing about this, I hadn't pursued this because I was hoping since the cheesmanni was originally crossed with 4 tomatoes and then processed through to F5 that there shouldn't be any non-standard germination barriers. I replanted 97L97 yesterday. If these don't germinate, I'll look into alternate germination methods. Thanks for the link, I'll start looking at this now.[/QUOTE]

I thought the same last year, since the accession is basically a tomato with one gene from lycopersicoides. This time I did the 1/2 hour soak in 1/2 strength household bleach, rinsed thoroughly, and soaked another 1/2 hour in water to remove any residue before planting.