Quote:
Originally Posted by travis
Are you talking about professionally developed hybrids with the intent to sell certified F1 seed on a continuing basis, or the hobby tomato breeding currently raging among home gardeners who frequent this and other tomato discussion boards?
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The reason I asked this is because if you truly wish to produce and sell F1 hybrid tomato seed on a continuing basis, you will have to first develop and continually maintain standardized, true breeding parental lines.
You cannot expect to simply take pollen from a single example of one named open pollinated variety, and apply it to another single example of another open pollinated variety, year after year, and get the exact same heterozygous gene pair combinations ... UNLESS you first spend several years growing large populations of the same two parental varieties, culling out the irregulars, and selecting only the target standards to establish the two, standardized, true breeding parental lines.
The same issue exists if you were to hit upon a great hybrid combo of two named open pollinated varieties, named the F1 hybrid, revealed to a second party (or the world) the two parent varieties with the intent that others will replicate your hybrid tomato. They may be lucky enough to have on hand, or obtain, an example of each open pollinated parent to make a close enough replication; or they may not. The current sourcing of general production, open pollinated, named varieties, particularly for the so-called "heirloom" types, is not necessarily known for standardization to the extent required to attain "true breeding" parental lines.
On the other hand, if your intent is to explore the pleasurable tomato breeding hobby, as many of us have, then by all means use your best examples of the various tomato varieties you have on hand, and cross pollinate them, grow the F1 seed, discover which combinations excel in the characteristics you find valuable, and name the hybrid what you wish (after a reasonable check to see if the same name or combination has not previously been used).