Roma type and beefsteak type on same plant.

[bower]

Stan,

BTD should be an OP, rather than a hybrid - should be stable and homozygous just like the heirloom Opalka.

Perhaps the answer is that Opalka and BTD had very few traits in common, thereby the high level of heterozygosity and as a consequence unusual variety of fruit shape and size. ?

Check out this full text about fruit shape... Opalka is one of the fruit in the first colour graphic (magnificent graphic!!), which shows the shape genes are SUN and LC... BTD probably LC and FAS..

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3091046/

[Stan Marzano]

Thanks, will read. It's on the upper end of technical for me but I'll digest it.

[Stan Marzano]

Interesting article, but i can't find the explanation of how two distinct fruit shapes can occur on the same plant. I guess it's easier to ask the forum if anyone else has seen such stark difference in shape on the same plant? Pics?

I'm just gonna grow out both types and post what I get.

[Stan Marzano]

I also noticed that the roma type base color is orange with red stripes and the beefsteak is opposite.

[EBHarvey]

I had a F1 Opalka X Yellow Brandywine spitting out beefsteaks and opalka-shapes on the same plant a few years ago, but the shape variability didn't carry over to the next generation - its descendants were all either beefsteaks or elongated pepper-shapes.

[Stan Marzano]

Does that include seeds from both types?

[EBHarvey]

No, I only saved seeds from the opalka-shaped fruit.

[Stan Marzano]

oh ok, I'm doing both. I plan on stablizing the elongated shape. Nice striped tomato, good tart sauce it made.

[lrussillo]

Berkeley tie-dye is not a hybrid. It is an open pollinated from Brad Gates, Wild Boar Farms.

[Stan Marzano]

So I'm beginning to think that maybe the top half of my plants were just fused blooms. Is this possible, all 7 plants? I'm growing out F2 now and I notice a megabloom already.

[carolyn137]

Stan, I'm just reading the last bit of this thread now, and I think THE best example of a variety that is stable and shows a variety of fruit shapes on a single plant is Prue.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/P...b=General_Info

It's one of the few varieties that I can ID by aroma of cut slices, I think the taste is outstanding and would suggest it as a variety to grow, for everyone.

Please note all the different shapes and sizes that Tania mentions, many of which you can see in the pictures.

Carolyn

[Stan Marzano]

Thank you, Yes, I see, kind of similar. But I did notice though the bi-color striping on my tomatoes is opposite on the 2 different types that show up.

[bower]

I don't know if pastes get megablooms, but large hearts do, as well as beefsteaks. Cherries don't afaik.

One thing I'm thinking as my own F2's start to set, is that with small number of plants, the ratios expected also fall apart pretty easily. It's like dice. Roll once and you might be lucky or not. Roll many times and you'll get closer to the expected odds. Afaict.

[carolyn137]

Stan, at this point I am confused, so please help me out here.

What you show in your picture is one potted plant of the F1 from the cross? And you said there were several plants of the F1 that looked the same grown elsewhere.

When you did the cross two years ago and I don't want to back and see how you wrote the cross but I'll assume that Opalka was the female parent and BPT the male pollen donor.

So you took the corolla off of Opalka so no self pollenization could occur and then bagged or otherwise protected your cross so that pollen from other varieties growing nearby could not X pollinate the Opalka. And I ask about protection since not all ovules in the tomato ovary are always fertilized, so there's always the possibility of insect mediated X pollination from other varieties being grown in the same season.

Let's assume that you now have F1 seed and you sowed the F1 seed for last summer. And you say there were several plants and all were the same, and that's what you showed in your picture only you grew just one plant in a pot at home. And it's those plants that gave you both opalka shaped ones and beefsteak ones.

Then you saved seeds from the F1 Opalka ones and also the F1 beefsteak ones and you showed us the seedlings in that picture. Right? And no results on those until the end of this summer. Right?

If it were me, and it's not, at this point I wouldn't worry that much about the two shapes seen unless you DID protect the manually crossed plants, and that I don't know. I'd wait to see what you get with your now seedlings and that should give a possible clue to what has happened.

Just a few more comments. I see the gold striping on the small fruit, presumably from Opalka which I know well since I was the person who introduced it, and then you say the reverse occurs on the beefsteak one, and as many times as I've looked at the larger one, that's not what I see.I see gold stripes on a red background as well.

You use the word bicolor but what you show are not bicolors. Bicolors refer to varieties where there's an initial gold color of the fruit and then a pinkish red blush starts at the blossom end and moves upwards toward the stem end and when the fruit is cut open you see that second pinkish/red color in the flesh.

Tania's superb data website is not downloading right now so I had to Google and here's a link from Google IMAGES for Big Rainbow and look at the cut slices to see the interior pink/red blush.

A variety with just stripes on the outside and no secondary color inside isn't a bicolor, it's just striped.

https://www.google.com/search?q=big+...2&ved=0CCkQsAQ

I hope at least some of what I've said and the questions I've asked may be helpful.

Carolyn

[Stan Marzano]

Every you said (assumed) is correct, and no I did not subseqently protect the manual cross. Thanks for the clarifications. And yes we are patiently waiting, ha! As far as the striping it seems to me that the oval shaped is red streaked, and the beefsteak type is gold streaked.