So let's use an example from the Dwarf Project.
Patrina crossed Golden Dwarf champion (female, small to medium yellow fruited dwarf) with Green Giant (male, large green potato leaf). she emasculated a flower on GDC and added pollen from Green Giant - the tomato developed, and all seed from that developing fruit are F1 seed, which should be identical (unless a bit of stray pollen from another variety snuck in). And that is what we found - all of us who grew this variety - which she named Sneezy - got indeterminate, regular leaf plants with medium sized yellow fruit. (Expression of the dominant traits).
So you pick one of those Sneezy fruit and save the seed - and you get all sorts of things (those are F2 seeds - so the variety of plants you get is the F2 generation being grown out). We got RL and PL indeterminates, PL and RL dwarfs, and in the dwarf growouts, we got small to large yellow and small to large green fruit on the various foliage types (we didn't grow out any of the indeterminates, but would have seen the same).
What we then found - say, we selected a nice RL yellow dwarf, F2 fruit but the seeds are F3. Growout of the F3 continued quite a lot of variation (I think having recessives for color and foliage in the cross contributed to the great variation and instability in this line) - and from that we got PL and RL dwarf, yellow and green fruit.
Interestingly, when we select an F2 that expressed both recessive traits (PL and green), stabilization happens in fewer generations.
Anyway - this is what is so fascinating about all of it! And yes, the best way to see the possibilities is to grow out as many F2, F3 etc plants as possible.
__________________
Craig
|