Bigger Tomato better seeds?

[troad]

In reading DR. Males book about creating your own open pollinated tomatoes she refers to selecting for specific traits in your tomato crosses. She said that some people select the largest tomatoes. I am a complete novice and maybe this is a dumb question but does the individual fruit have any bearing on the quality of the offspring? I saved seeds from a Brandywine I grew from seed this summer. I used one of the first fruits to ripen to save seeds. Later in the summer the same plant produced a tomato half again larger than the one I saved first. I saved seed from the larger tomato and have it separately stored. All things being equal ie, no accidental cross pollinating will there be a chance for different results next year from the different seeds?

[TomatoDon]

That is one thing I would like to learn more about too. I tried saving seeds this year but don't think I did the fermentation right. The more I get into this, the more I get into it!

I hope this thread is a long one about seed selection!

Don
North MS

[dice]

If neither tomato off of that one plant was
cross-pollenated by pollen from another plant,
the seeds from both should have the same genes.
There could be a random mutation that affects
the seeds of one fruit but not the other, but those
are extremely rare, far more rare than bee-made
crosses.

In other words, if there is no cross-pollenation or mutation
(all fruits are the product of self-pollenation), then
all seeds from all fruits of the same plant will have
the same genes.

[carolyn137]

Later in the summer the same plant produced a tomato half again larger than the one I saved first. I saved seed from the larger tomato and have it separately stored. All things being equal ie, no accidental cross pollinating will there be a chance for different results next year from the different seeds?

*****

There's one way to find out and that's to grow out plants from both saved seeds.

But I do agree with Dice that the genes in both should be the same as long as no mutations or cross pollinations occured.

Selecting for earliness and larger fruits is something that's hard for me to understand and accept based on the few examples I know of.

Tony Neves was said to have upsized what we know as Neves Azorean Red but I have no idea of what he started with.

Chuck Wyatt selected Brandywine ( Sudduth) for earliness and named that selection after his wife Joyce, but most folks who grow it find that there's no significant difference between his strain and regular ole Brandywine.

And what we're speaking about here is not adaptation, which I see so many folks referring to, which takes hundreds, yea thousands of years. The best example, fully documented, is Ethiopian Wheat.

So yes, some claim they can upsize a variety just by reselecting the largest fruits each year, and who am I to disagree with them when I don't know what they started with and don't know how many years they put into the project.

So how can I say no, it never can happen.

As for me, if I wanted a larger version of something I'd select a different variety that was close and already a larger size.

[dice]

If the fruit does not have some genetic difference
from other fruit on the plant or from other plants that
grew from the same seeds, then nothing is really
selected that will grow any differently than seeds
from other fruits on the same plant or from other
plants of the same cultivar (that are also not mutated
or cross-pollenated).

Some useful links on hot tomato genes work:

http://kdcomm.net/~tomato/gene/genes.html

Development of West Virginia '63
cultivar:

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/sustanag...c/Moreon63.pdf

When people talk about "selection", they are usually
selecting a plant with a mutation that shows up in
a row of plants just like the original, or they are selecting
plants with desireable traits from a group of F2, F3, F4
etc hybrid offspring (where the offspring don't all have
matching gene pairs in each plant) to grow out in the next generation.

[dice]

PS:

One more thing on this, looking back at the
subject of the thread: I got this commercial
packet of Box Car Willie seeds last year,
and they were kind of little, about the size
of most cherry tomato seeds. They sprouted
ok, the plants that grew from them matched
the description of the cultivar, and so did the fruit.

I saved seeds from multiple fruits on three
different plants of that cultivar, and my seeds
are mostly twice the size of the BCW seeds from
the commercial packet. I would guess that the
difference was soil nutrition, potassium or phosphorus
or both. My soil was higher in the nutrients that the
plant needs for seed development than the soil that
the plants were grown in that produced the small seeds
in the commercial packet.

[troad]

don06 looks like you may get your wish check out the links posted by dice.

dice excellent replies and those links are great. Thanks. I understand about the selection being used in the F2-F3 generations but was wondering about the differences in one plant and the liklihood of getting better plants by keeping the pick of the litter so to speak. Also the post about the seed size very interesting. I have been starting with the "robust" seeds in my packets for fear I may not get a good plant from the smaller seeds.
Dr. Male- how about I just wait for the Brandywine plant to produce more of the larger tomatoes? Really appreciate your comments and I look for your posts on other peoples topics. By the way I planted a SOTW on your recomendation and thought it was great. Unfortunately I recently read your good comments about Wes and the Tony's Italian now will have to see if I can get seeds.

[dice]

"pick of the litter"

I sometimes do that, just because I suspect
that the seeds will be better developed in
a big, ripe fruit. (You can always squish out
the seeds and eat the rest of it, too.)