Quote:
Originally Posted by MissS
Mega blooms are to some degree hereditary. They occur when the plants are young and the temperatures are cool. So, these are most times on a plants first few fruits. Some tomatoes varieties are more prone to having fruit with mega blooms than others. Fruits from mega blooms are what grow those giant tomatoes everyone loves.
Since these tomatoes are fused, it is possible for each section to have seeds from different pollen donors. It is also possible for a normal tomato to have seed from different donors in each of it's locales.
With that being said, I would think that it would be just fine to save seed from a fused tomato. Since these are early fruits, there is less chance of a bee cross pollinating the fruit. The bees are in short supply at this time of the year, so most pollination is done normally.
Some people choose to save seed from each tomato separately others like to mix several fruits seeds together. I myself like to mix them. That way, if there has been a cross it is more likely that the next seed out of the pack will be one that will grow true to form.
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I'm glad to see that you essentially agreed with what I posted in the second post here with a couple of links to confirm what I posted.
Again, I would never save seeds from a fruit that resulted from a megabloom, ever. Yes, individual blossoms can also be cross pollinated,that's for sure, and that also depends on what your x pollination is,and I used to keep track of that when I was listing so many varieties in the SSE Yearbooks.Mine was about 5 % which means that on average,of seeds saved from about 100 different varieties about 5 will be X pollinated and it's also kown that even with X pollination,not all ovules in the tomato ovary will be cross pollinated,but why take the chance say I.
I remember reading a study where it was shown that taking all seeds that were fertilized in the ovary,then taken from the following fruit,there could be up to 5 different ones,meaning 5 different pollen donors.
Carolyn