Quote:
Originally Posted by schill93
Wait a minute. Let start from the beginning. Someone takes pollen created from a stable hairloom tomato flower, (tomato plant A) and brings it over to another stable hairloom of a different named tomato (plant B), and is able to place the pollen successfully on plant B stamin, and a new tomato grows on the plant as a result.
Then when this newly created Hyprid tomato is ripe and the grower collects seed from it, and sells the seed, it is referred to as F1 seed. Am I right so far?
OK, if I am, than the only way to create a true hybrid plant of the newly named cross that was created, is to save seed from each generation and grow it out until a stable version with the desired charactoristics are achieved?
Thereafter, referring to it as a Hybrid plant created as opposed to a first hybrid tomato seed created from the intial cross made. Is this correct?
If I am correct however, which seed is considered more desirable?
Believe me, it is not easy to expose my ignorance on line here, so have pity.
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Yes, the seed from the original cross is the F1 seed, and that's the same thing as the "hybrid" seed. Cherokee Carbon F1 seed means the exact same thing as Cherokee Carbon Hybrid seed. These seeds will produce the Cherokee Carbon tomato.
If you grow the Cherokee Carbon F1 seeds and harvest the resulting Cherokee Carbon tomatoes, the seeds you save from those tomatoes (the F2 seeds) will not grow true -- meaning, any plants you grow from those seeds are likely to produce tomatoes that are somewhat to significantly different from Cherokee Carbon. It's possible the differences won't be really obvious, especially when the parents are fairly similar like these are (both are large, black, regular leaf, indeterminate beefsteaks), but you'll get some differences.
If you go through a process of growing multiple generations of seeds, selecting the characteristics you want at each generation, you may eventually be able to produce a stable tomato that is similar to or the same as Cherokee Carbon. At that point, it would be Cherokee Carbon OP (open pollinated), and its seeds would produce the same tomatoes, down through the generations.
So, no, it's not correct to say that you get a "true hybrid plant" by saving seed from each generation. That's how you turn a hybrid into an OP (if you're skilled and lucky and it works).