Different answer, if you are having problems stabilizing traits, try making a back cross. For example, if F2 and F3 are good to very good, cross an F2 X F3 and see what the offspring do. The reason for doing this is because linkage often interferes with tomato flavor. For example, fruit density is linked with less juice and reduced aromatic compounds. This comes from linkage on chromosome 5. Crossing F2 X F3 has a fairly good chance of changing the linkage so the flavor can develop in future generations.
One particularly hard trait to stabilize is fruit sweetness. This usually is associated with introgression of a gene from a wild species to increase sugar. It is difficult to combine the high sugar gene with genes for high flavor. This is one reason I am using Hibor in several planned crosses this year. Hibor is stable for very high sugar.
|