Thread: hybrid seeds
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Old June 14, 2009   #1
tjg911
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Location: zone 5b northwest connecticut
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Default hybrid seeds

other than sun gold i don't grow hybrid tomatoes because there are just too many great tomatoes i have found and yet to be found by me that are op. that said i'm curious about hybrid seeds.

we know that hybrid tomato seeds will not reliability produce the same hybrid tomato they came from. but i suspect there is 1 or 2 generations that do. since i don't understand genetics, please speak to a lay person.

so we take tomatoes a and b (i have read there may be several parents involved in a hybrid not just 2 parents) and produce tomato seeds for sale to the public. so when you cross tomato a flowers with tomato b pollen you grow tomatoes and let's call the seeds in those tomatoes generation I.

it seems that they have to grow generation I seeds to ensure that the tomato is what they want, if i buy sun gold or jet star i do not want sweet 100 or big mama. so they grow generation I, it's what they want and then they harvest the seeds so that is generation II. we buy generation II and grow our hybrid tomatoes.

so there seems to me, if i am correct in my assumptions, that a hybrid is true to type for 1 or 2 generations and i'm guessing that after that they become less stable and start to revert to whatever their parents were.

am i correct or way off base?

if i am wrong then how in the world do they know the hybrid seeds they are selling are what they say they are? and if hybrids are not true to type then how do they produce seeds without growing them to be certain they are what they expect?

thanks,

tom
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