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Originally Posted by carolyn137
Hilde, here's another perspective.
I applaud your efforts to do crosses as I do others, but most of the folks that I know pay little to no attention at all concerning tomato genes and dominance, recessiveness, except when using a PL for the maternal plant when the other parent is an RL, so one can tell if the cross took.
What most folks seem to do is to choose two varieties that have characteristics that they'd like to see combined in some way, into ultimately one offspring.
So that means saving seeds from thje initial F1 hybrid, planting out as many as you can from those F2 seeds, making selections from one or more plants whose fruits and performance please you, planting out the F3 seed, etc.
That is, they don't sit down and look at genes and try to predict what they might get based on the parents they've selected.
It's kind of like my foray into breeding daylilies when I'd go out in the AM and cross pretty by pretty. Or frangrant by fragrant. 
Don't get me wong now, a knowledge of tomato genes , at least of the more common ones, is good to know, but there's so much more that isn't known, one example being the genes involved with gold/red bicolors. |
Caroline, I have always been very interested in genetics and and dominant and recessive traits etc. I know you don't absolutely have to know these things in order to make crosses. But I want to! Just because I think it is a lot of fun!
So I am really looking forward to reading the book you recommended, and the research papers Dave and Sherry linked to.
Talking about gold/red bicolors, I have some Cherokee Bicolor from Mark growing in the green house. From two different mother plants. I believe they are F3.
How come there is so little known about the genetics of bicolors? Has there been little research on this or is this just particularly difficult to find out of? I just assumed that I would get all gold/red bicolored cherokees, but maybe not? The plants are very healthy, and they have tolerated whatever conditions I have in the green house better than most any other plant, perhaps except Bulgarian #7.
Is bicoloration dominant or recessive to single coloration?
I am having a lot of fun here, and part of the fun is learning about tomato genetics and speculate to whatever will show up in the crosses and offsprings. I don't have any illusions that I know it all, genetics can be very complicated. At some point I thought that two parents with blue eyes could not get brown eyed offspring, but it is in fact possible, although it doesn't happen very often. Genetics is more complicated than one would perhaps think.
Hilde