Quote:
Originally Posted by carolyn137
I'm the person Travis was referring to when he mentioned the OP Ramapo which was stable at the F3, and that so since the two hybrid parents were very similar varieties. It meant growing out the hybrid, saving F2 seeds, replanting those, saving F3 seeds, making selectionos and at each growout also planting the original hybrid for comparison. It took 3 years and I could only grow plants in the summer.
I'm also the person he was referring to who was able to develop what Craig L and I called OTV Brandywine. OTV stands for Off the Vine, an international tomato newsletter that Craig and I were publishing at the time. Craig had sent out seeds of Yellow Brandywine to someone and got back a picture of a good looking PL red beefsteak along with seeds. Since I had a whole field for my tomato growing at the time, much more than Craig had , I did the dehybridization.It took me out to I think the F6 or F7,making selections and saving seeds to get to what we called OTV Brandywine that was stable. Again, I could only grow plants in the summer.
So about 3 years for the Ramapo OP and maybe 6-7 years for the OTV one.
Maybe it's just me, but I'm not thrilled with the tone of some recent posts in this thread. This is not the place to be making some of the accusations I've seen, as I see it. If there are specific issues that need to be discussed, please take it to e-mails or PM's.
Thanks for your cooperation. 
Yes, I get paid for being a Global Moderator here and I get an extra $$$ bonus when I have to post what I just did, but while any extra money goes to my dark Chocolate budget, I really don't need it.
And if you believe that above paragraph, you're too far out there to appreciate my attempt at a bit of humor.  
Carolyn |
Thanks for jumping in Carolyn, and for the OTV story. It's one of my favorite 'Brandywines' (even though it's not a Brandywine).
. I'd love to know, from a strategic perspective, apx. how many OTV plants you grew out per generation for selection? And how closely the final product resembles the "original" (F1 or F2, whatever you had first)?
To me, one of the most interesting facets of this debate, is that I suspect very few of our most classic heirlooms were "properly" bred. The simple fact is that creating a stable tomato in three years is
EASY. Grow the F1 in the summer, a couple F2's in the green house in the fall (F2), send 'em south to a growing buddy for an early start. The south gets you to F3 (barely) in a year and a month or two. Repeat. In year three, you could easily be at F7/8 and stable for whatever you've ended up with, only growing a couple plants per generation. Whatever you've got at F8 will be 99.9% stable.
This is "wrong", because rather than seeing ALL the genetic possibilities represented in the cross (as you would growing 100's of plants per generation), you're playing the genetic lottery, and growing a couple random plants per generation. But the F8
will be stable for whatever traits you've ended up with.
Funny thing is, I have a sneaking suspicion that many of our most beloved varieties came into being in exactly that manor. This is especially true of older varieties, and family heirlooms. I truly doubt that the person who first found Cherokee Purple, for example, found the cross, and then grew out hundreds of them in a field, carefully selected for dozens of traits over 8 generations, and then said "there, it's perfect!"
I think it's much more likely that they discovered the F1, thought "this is good", grew a few plants a year for many years, saving seeds from the ones they liked the most, and we ended up with a "classic" variety. That may even be why so many of our best heirlooms taste sooooo great, but are disease vulnerable, low production or store poorly. Taste is the phenotype most selected for by people making "unprofessional" selections, especially those growing small scale. Say you're a hobby gardener and you have three plants, and plant #1 tastes great, plant #2's ok, and plant #3 tastes like horse dookey, you're most likely to save seeds from #1.
The real question we should be asking isn't "Are these new crosses good enough?" Instead we should be asking "Are our old, beloved standard varieties as good as they could have been?"
The flip side of this coin is that we now have a deep understanding of genetic inheritance and of "best practice" breeding. Giant companies like Seminis make a cross, grow out thousands of plants per generation to capture multiple genes for vigor, productivity, and disease resistance. They then cross two of the stable OP's they've created to make a predictable (and commercially lucrative) F1 they can sell to Burpee, Gurney's, Walmart etc. In scientific terms they do it "right". But that presents an interesting conundrum for serious tomato-nerds like us.
Show of hands, who here would rather grow Celebrity, Better Boy and Early Girl rather than Paul Robeson, Cowlick Brandywine (selected small scale from one nursery plant) or Amazon Chocolate?
And that's why not only am I OK with how "The Posse's" going about tomato breeding, but am an enthusiastic participant. Maybe the end result's not as good as it could have been, who knows? But we're having fun, getting our hands dirty, and eating things that we had enough passion not only to grow, but to create. And isn't that kind of the point?
To air all my tomato breeding dirty laundry: This year I'm growing out 106 F1's of my own creation of which I'll grow 3 plants each in three different locations. I'm also growing out 23 different F2, F3, and F4 lines (mostly mine but a few for friends) of which I'll be growing between 15 and 25 plants per line myself. I'll also have gardening buddies both locally and around the country growing another 10 to 20 plants (total) per cross. This is hardly perfect, and we are unlikely to see EVERY potential segregate, but we'll hopefully see some pretty darn good ones and carry on from there. In the mean time I'll be paying real close attention to all those F1's and in the fall I'll be offering free F2 seed from those that show potential here and at other forums to anyone who wants them. All in, between a bunch of people we still probably won't do it "right", but we'll probably find some cool new tomatoes,revel in the miracle of genetic diversity, and have a good time doing it.
If that doesn't sound like your cup of tea, that's cool. There's literally thousands of great OP's out there looking for a home. And you'll always know what you're going to get. But I'd rather find surprise instability than grow boring tomatoes.