Tomatito de Jalapa

[Starlight]

If things go as planned for this year, depending on weather and pests, I plan on bagging several of my tomatoes and pepper for seed and than plan to make a few crosses and bag them and then just let the rest go by the way of nature.

I have reading some of the threads here in the breeding section and maybe I am misunderstanding some things, but it seems that having wild tomato seed is a good thing.

I have some seeds of Tomatito de Jalapa that I am going to start. Supposedly it is a wild tomato. I plan to save some seed, but I also want to try and make some crosses with it.

I have no idea as to what might or might not be good to cross it with, so if anybody has done any work with it, I would appreciate knowing how your crosses worked out.

What I could find listed it as a cherry/currant type of tomato. What is the difference between cherry and currant other than size, anything?

Also, in my googling, I read where this tomato has horizontal resistance problems. Can somebody break that down for me, please and is there a way to get around it?

[peppero]

Best wishes for your tomato endeavors; I must try that someday but, I have enough obsessions as it is.

jon

[Starlight]

Thanks Jon! I do too, but it is going to be a major learning experience with hybridizing peppers and tomatoes instead of flowers for a change.

[carolyn137]

Briefly, for many years it was throught that wild type tomatoes all had exerted stigmas such that the pollen bearing anthers were above that stigma so were not self pollinated. But more recent research has shown that maybe only half of them do.

Currant tomatoes are in the genus of Solanum Pimpinellifolium while cherry tomatoes are in Solanum esculentum, or some say S. Lycopersicon.

Recently there was a thread here about currants and Tania had classified Matt's Wild as being a currant, but I disagreed and linked toJohnny's page for it

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/p-7932-ma...ld-cherry.aspx

Click on details at the bottom right and you'll see that it's described as a cerasiforme which means it is not a currant, rather a cherry b/c it doesn't have an exerted stigma.

For many years folks avoided growing currant varieties since it was said that they attracted pollinators which could then cross with the regular tomatoes folks were growing. However it's now known that maybe only half have exerted stigmas and one very savvy tomato person I know says he's more worried that his regular tomatoes would X pollinate the currants.

Carolyn

[Starlight]

Thank you for taking the time to explain Carolyn. I'm going to add the word cerasiforme to my personal tomato notes. I had read the thread about the currants and I was getting a bit confused because I had always heard of Matt's Wild Cherry as a cherry, so I have that cleared up.

Interesting knowledge about the wild tomatoes too. I appreciate it. I'm also copying and saving it to a document so I don't lose the information you shared with me. : )