I would expect to see hybrid vigor in the F1 of a new cross, but there are few who do such crosses that are doing it just to get F1 seed. Almost all save F2 seed, plant out, make selections, continue doing, to see what they get and then determine what they want to work with to get out to the OP state.
As for saving seed I have NEVER saved seed from just one fruit unless I had no alternative. Always many fruits from one plant or better still many fruits from several plants. And fruits of all sizes as was discussed here in another thread.
MY reasoning for doing so is since I don't bag blossoms I want to dilute out any naturally X pollinated fruits to lessen any F1 seeds in any given fruit.
I used to save 500-1000 seeds of all my varieties for SSE listings and I'm telling you, folks could go thru maybe 500-700 of those seeds and then an offtype would pop up. To some that's a problem while for others it's an opportunity.
Mark Korney is still working on an offtype from KB seeds from 2004 I sent him and is getting red and pink hearts. For him it's an opportunity while others will just complain.
There already is a genetic bottleneck with our garden types of tomatoes and if I think of the name, I can find it, you can Google her work. She's been working mostly on what genes are involved in tomato shape and size. And there's another person who has been involved in doing DNA analyses of species as opposed to non-species and coming up with some interesting information.
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Carolyn
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