clone question
 

I had a volunteer tomato come up in an onion bed in 2014. I let it sprawl and it was 16 feet tip to tip, largest plant ever in the garden. Two cuttings out of four survived the winter and produced this year. Spider mites bothered all my tomatoes this year, so lower production is understood. My question is how come the 2014 tomatoes were slicer size and flat bottomed and the 2015 fruit was salad size and had a small point on the bottom ? Cutting or clone it should be the same. Did save a few seeds this year to see what comes up.

That does not sound right, to me: Growing from cutting is supposed to produce a CLONE = exact copy.

Gardeneer

The phenotype (what we can see and measure with our eyes and hands) is derived from the interaction of the genes with the environment. Different environments can trigger different phenotypes even if the genes haven't changed.

The first thing that came to my mind was it was acting like a Hybrid in the F2 or F3. Segregation to one of the parents and then possibly blending into a new combination. Several times I've tried to dehybridize some of the popular hybrids and the growouts followed a similar result.

I think Joseph's explanation is the most likely scenario. I don't know what happened exactly, a food for thought explanations, less likely, but theoretically possible explanations. 1) If the cuttings were taken from the same branch and that branch underwent a somatic mutation, the fruit could permanently be that way. Although if they were taken from different branches, then that is very unlikely.

Like Ted says, that is exactly what is sounds like, but since these were cuttings we'd expect them to be the same as the 2014 plant.

I think Joseph has the answer. The cuttings were from different branches and planted next to each other in a different section of the garden. I didn't take cuttings this year because of the spider mites but did save seed. Since it is from a volunteer it could be F1 F2 or F whatever. It will be interesting to see what comes up.

I was thinking that the stress hormones produced by the spider mite damage could have played a role.