Most Attractive To Bumblebees?

[joseph]

Originally Posted by joseph

A couple days ago I extracted and fermented the F2 seeds from a plant of this cross that I grew overwinter in the basement and greenhouse. The first ripe fruit produced about 116 seeds. I planted half of them immediately after fermenting. The rest are being dried.

The F2 seeds germinated quickly. Here's what they looked like today:



This is a cross between my old "Standard Tomato", DX52-12, and my current early season market tomato, Ot'Jagodka. I called it a standard because I always planted a few just to calibrate how the season was progressing and how other varieties compared. It is just a little bit too long season for my garden. It was a variety developed specifically for my valley by Campbell's Soup Company in collaboration with the University Extension Service. I am hyped about this cross, because both are determinant plants. The ideal from this cross would be 6 ounce super early fruits with a loose or open flower structure that is highly favored by bumblebees (or other pollinators). DX52-12 is prone to BER, so I'm not at all pleased about that, but it's a trait that's easy enough to select away from.

Also another cross for this project ripened F2 seeds that I fermented, dried, and planted today. The mother was Ot'Jagodka, the father was a non-tracked, huge-fruited, late season plant with a loose or open flower structure. The fruit I harvested was red and about the size of a golf-ball.

Growing these in the basement overwinter worked out very well for me. I have one more F1 cross that has yet to fruit. Mother: Hillbilly or Virginia Sweets. Father: Ot'Jagodka. It currently has quite green fruits. Probably will ripen in time to get another generation this growing season.

[bower]

It's a dull day for gardening here today - snow on the ground and blowing fairly horizontal with northwesterly winds.. brrr. But three tomato plants had opened their flowers by 10 am, even though it wasn't quite 50 F. Couple pix for you, they are not as unravelled as your most extreme case but not as closed as industrial either.
Moravsky Div is a sibling (or similar?) of Stupice they say, so Stu should have similar flower structure.. This MDiv is open flower 47 days from germination.
The other open flowers are KimKupola F2's, 45 days from germination. One of them is a twin flower - twin fruit were in the F1 as well. As regards shape and colour of the fruit, it's wait and see if I get a yellow this time around. Only started 4, and one is a runt or mutant...
Anyway, here are the flowers. Yay, first flowers!!! No bees yet to give a darnoodle.

[joseph]

Bower: Nice looking flowers. Congratulations! Tell me if you like about "twin flowers". Heritable? Fluke?

I have a lot of tomato flowers open in the greenhouse now... So it was no surprise to see a bumblebee in there this morning. Trapped though. Not pollinating.

Anyway. I grew a lot of tomatoes for the farmer's market. They are very precocious determinates, as befitting my cold climate and short season. Many of them are already flowering, so I get to screen for more open flowers. I'm keeping the plants with more open flowers and sending the others to market.

An example of a plant with more promiscuous flowers. It's from my "Early Saladette Landrace".


Early Saladette Landrace

[joseph]

DX 52-12. A local heirloom with a loose/open flower structure


Ot'Jagodka: A Russian variety that has an industrialized type flower. Not as industrialized as it could be, because the petals are swept back out of the way of pollinators. And it drops pollen like a cloud of dust.


DX 52-12 was pollinated by Ot'Jagodka. Here's what the flowers of the F1 plants look like.

F1: DX 52-12 X Ot'Jagodka


So from this we can infer:

The cross was successful, because the flower structure changed.
The industrialized type flower traits are dominant.
The genes responsible for not joining the anthers together in DX are not fully suppressed by the cross as evidenced by a bit of a gap near the base of the anthers.

I suppose that if the industrialized flower type is dominant, then once I obtain loose/open flowers then the trait is stable unless cross pollination occurs with an industrialized flower.

I'm intending to grow the F2 plants in pots and select in the greenhouse for early flowering and open flowers. That will allow me to plant the most precocious and most promiscuous close together in the garden.

[joseph]

Last fall a lady gave me tomatoes that she called "Current Tomatoes". The fruits were a bit bigger than a pea. I was hoping that they would have loose/open flowers, but they are tightly closed.

[bower]

Joseph, the flower on the local heirloom is pretty amazing!

Those twin flowers do appear to be heritable - there was twin fruit in the F1 last year. Too bad it's a kind of 'megabloom' though - I won't have a plant with twins all over. But that's just as well, because the twins don't necessarily ripen at once, which is not a good thing. The first flower 'megabloom' is a response to cold stress, afaik. All three of the normal seedlings in that KimKupola F2 have funky first blossoms but the second blooms are more normal looking. Closer to 'industrial' types, although the bud size is large overall. See the first pic below.

Smaller flowers often seem to be the most closed. The first flowers on two beefsteak type blooms below - they are crosses with Indian Stripe and have nice fat buds like IS. Maybe 'megablooms' too but still, typical of beefsteaks.

[joseph]

F2: DX52-12 X Ot'Jagodka. Almost ready to be transplanted into the field. I'm still toying with the idea of letting them flower in the 3.5" pots so that I can screen for open flowers without dedicating the garden space. Either way should be fine. Both grandparents are great tomatoes for my garden.

[joseph]

Here's a comparison of a tomatillo flower, on the left, to a tomato flower. The tomato is self-pollinating. The tomatillo is a mandatory out-crosser. I want to move my tomatoes towards tomatillo type flowers.

[Fusion_power]

Uhmmm, you might be a bit careful what you wish for Joseph. S. Habrochaites has flowers very similar to what you want, i.e. are similar to a tomatillo. But, there is a problem. S. Habrochaites flowers come with the S gene for self sterility. You would wind up with a beautiful flower but low seed production. There is a way around this, a very few S. Habrochaites are self-fertile. LA2175 happens to be one of the very few with this trait. I'll see if I can get you a few seed to trial from a cross with a domestic tomato to LA2175.

[joseph]

The self-sterile trait exists in my tomatillos. As a population, they set seed like crazy. I mostly always remember to tell people at the farmer's market that they need at least two plants for proper pollination and fruit set. I'm not much interested in selfing individual tomatillo or tomato plants. I'd rather require that they cross pollinate.

Short term, I'll work on getting bigger and more open flowers. Anything that helps in that direction is appreciated.

Long term, I'd love to get the self-incompatibility trait fully incorporated into my tomatoes... Mandatory out-crossing would be a glorious way to enforce promiscuous pollination. I think the genetic drag of wild traits would also be beneficial... It might significantly broaden the genetic base of my tomato population.

I spent most of yesterday reading about embryo rescue in inter-specific tomato crosses. The techniques are within reach of what I could do in a home kitchen. I'm growing Lycopersicon glandulosum (or whatever it's currently being called). I suppose that I'll attempt to cross it this summer to something derived from Jagodka. A cross between Jagodka and Solanum habrochaites would be much easier to make, but doing the research to obtain seeds of a self-incompatible strain of S. habrochaites, is pushing my abilities. Guess that I could try a few strains, and see if anything fails to set fruit when selfed.

[bower]

I believe it was Carolyn who mentioned sweat bees as an important pollinator of tomatoes. I am so used to bees being big and conspicuous, I didn't give it much thought.. there are so many little guys around in my garden, but I expected a bee to look furry.. like a bee. So I thought, we don't have them here...

So today I found what I afterwards figured and googled to be a carpenter bee - big fella - but while googling for wild bees I saw something familiar and remembered the term "sweat bees"...

Here's a pretty amazing video of a sweat bee, halictid bee, on a tomato flower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXHksIkAqLA

This year I used compost from my own garden instead of the bought stuff, in the greenhouse containers. There's been more insect action - several kinds of flies, beetles, etcetera, and I've found three of these bees on different days recently - three metallic colours green blue and brown - each one lying on a tomato leaf looking dead - and I thought they were some wierd kind of fly, never dreamed they'd be bees! Especially not, tomato pollinating bees.

[joseph]

I planted seeds today from a cross between LA1777 (S. Habrochaites) and Columbianium which is a wild-type cherry tomato.

It's way late in my tomato growing season, so I'm intending to grow them in pots that I can transfer into the greenhouse in the fall.

I am hoping to select from the F2 for plants that are self-incompatible, so that I can introduce the self-incompatibility trait into my tomatoes and thus require cross-pollination.

[joseph]

I was in the garden today and noticed one variety of tomatoes that had exerted stigmas, and extra large flower petals, and that Solanum habrochaites smell. So I checked labels. Can you believe that? Me labeling a plant??? In my defense, it was a wimpy label. Anyway there were six plants and they are descended from SunGold, (about F4). There was a wide variation in flower morphology. Boo hoo! Too bad I didn't plant more of them. Woo hoo! I have six to choose from. I definitely aught to cross the two plants with the best flowers to Jagodka or something derived from it. While I'm at it, I suppose that I aught to bag some flowers to see if any of them are self-incompatible.

Today there were black micro-bees (sweat bees?) pollinating the tomatillo flowers. One of them was fussing around with one tomato plant. But only one micro-bee on one tomato. I'll keep an eye on that plant and see if it continues to be attractive. Most of the tomatoes are just starting to flower. The micro-bees were mostly targeting the carrot flowers. I'm growing a carrot seed crop, and they are currently in full bloom.

[joseph]

This flower is descended from Sungold. It's got extra large flower petals and an exerted stigma. I suppose the flower structure is influenced by Solanum habrochaites. The flowers on about half of the plants are industrialized-type, and half have exerted stigmas and/or larger petals. Too bad I only kept 6 plants.

[Fusion_power]

Joseph, I strongly advise against using the S gene in your tomatoes. Flowers only set when cross pollinated and sometimes not even then. The result is drastically reduced production.