[OneoftheEarls]

I found some information from martin who seems to know the background....maybe ask him.

I may be older than WI55 but wasn't very much interested in developing tomatoes in the early 1940s! It was developed by the University of Wisconsin as a blight resistant tomato intended for the large commercial tomato industry centered in Wisconsin and Northern Illinois. It's immediate family consists of John Baer, Del Monte, Early Baltimore, and Redskin. (The resistance came from Redskin.) It was an immediate success and used in the breeding lines of a number of Campbell varieties as well as West Virginia 63.

My part in WI55 will forever be as it's possible savior. Olds Seed Company originally had the commercial rights to it. When they went out of business in the early 1980s, Jung's inherited it. In the late 1990s, something went wrong with their supplier. The seeds were both crossed and/or mixed with some sort of paste type. When Jung's discovered it, they pulled it off sale. No catalog anywhere in the world listed WI55 in 2003. In February of that year, a good friend, Amy Roy of Madison, WI, started a thread on Garden Web "Why No Wisconsin 55?" I knew why and also had some seeds from around 1990. A dozen seedlings went to my daughter for growing in absolute isolation but forbidden to eat a single fruit. A bag of the fruit would be brought to me and 2 bags of others given in return. Having known that tomato for 50 years, I knew that all were exactly as they should be. Seeds were distributed free to over 600 gardeners that fall and that included a few thousand to Australia. A greenhouse seedling complex in Michigan requested 15,000 but I was not quite ready for that!

WI55 is still an enigma. Because of an ego problem with certain people, WI55 could not be listed as an "heirloom". No problem. If you look in the Jung's catalog, it is NOT listed that way and never will. It's in a class by itself. It was the ultimate of OP varieties just before hybrids took over. And, unbeknown to all but a single person, it had a gold sister which would definitely qualify as an "heirloom"!

Martin