Joseph has pointed out some important ideas in his earlier post.
Since your intent is to produce large batches of tomato sauce, salsa, or paste, BER is a critical issue with regard to paste tomatoes, as is having a full load of fruit all at once. So, I would think you'd want highly productive, fully determinate plants with BER resistant fruit.
This summer, I grew out some F2 seeds from a large fruited, beefsteak hybrid type recently developed in Florida. The F1 plant was a compact indeterminate with a bountiful crop of large red tomatoes with an heirloom appearance and good flavor.
To my surprise, one of my plants is a completely determinate, short stake type with "tall round" red fruit with pointed blossom ends. The tomatoes are modest size, heavy walled fruit with little gel or seeds. Most surprisingly, the flavor is better than the F1 beefsteak fruit from which the seeds came.
The tomatoes on this plant are ripening all at the same time, and there has been absolutely no BER, weather check, radial or concentric cracks, zipper drag, catfacing, irregularities, or blemishes of any sort.
What is not surprising is that the breeder apparently used a tomato with the "n" (nipple) gene to accomplish a tight or pinpoint blossom scar, as many professional breeders do this with their large and jumbo fresh market hybrids.
So, point is, maybe you can explore the use of F2 seeds from modern hybrids to find new lines of "paste" tomatoes with determinate growth habit and BER resistance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by joseph
Blossom End Rot seems to afflict paste tomatoes at a high rate... If I were to attempt to breed a new paste tomato I would make sure that one of the parents was a variety that is known to rarely if ever get BER. If there are 5 or 10 or 30 genes that contribute to better resistance to BER then perhaps some of them would inadvertently get included into the new paste tomato. We might not know the names and modes of actions of all the contributing genes, but we can observe in general which plants are more resistant.
Cylindrical fruits tend to get BER more than round fruits, so I'd select towards a round paste tomato. Pointy tips on fruits tends towards BER so I'd select against that trait as well.
One time I grew a tomato that had air inside instead of gel. It was a very dry tomato. It seems like that would make a great paste tomato. A tomato doesn't have to look like the archetypical Roma in order to be a wonderful as a paste tomato.
I prefer paste tomatoes to be determinate. Because I use them primarily to make sauce I want the whole harvest ripen at the same time so I can do one big batch of sauce instead of lots of little ones.
I would select against catfacing because that makes peeling tomatoes problematic for those recipes that call for peeled tomatoes.
I prefer about 4 ounce fruits because they work better with my sauce making equipment than larger fruits.
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