OSU Blue observations

[Ambiorix]

I do not know.
I am an amateur experimenter.
I make many different tries
I observe and I notice.
In 2013, I am going to make many of the other tries to obtain a blue inside color more important .

At the moment, I obtained 7 times in 4 years this color inside.

In 2012, I obtained it on 3 tomatoes of the same plantation.

I try to understand

I am certain of a thing until présent:the name of the tomato:

" BLUE IN "

[Iochroma]

Originally Posted by tomatoaddict

There's also the Blue tomato the Israeli's are working on. Seed supposed to be released this year. Black Galaxy. http://www.theblaze.com/stories/woul...-tomato-a-try/

I found this page from the seed company: http://www.seedstec.com/?categoryId=16664&itemId=23178

There is no indication that they sell the seeds for home-growing; it looks like they only offer it to specialty farmers.

[Iochroma]

I found another article that may indicate that high-anthocyanin tomatoes have longer shelf-life:
http://phys.org/news/2013-05-world-f...r-lasting.html

[goodwin]

Thought I'd update things with photos of some of this year's blue tomatoes. They are just getting ripe so I'll take a few to market tomorrow morning in Santa Fe. The Woolly and the Muddy Waters are Tom's. The rest are ones I've been working on. There is also a small blue and gold cherry and a pink and blue that appear to be stable. Frogsleap - what's new with you?
Lee

[Heritage]

Lee, looking great! What's the best tasting of the bunch?

Steve

[Tom Wagner]

Wooley? If you see a wiggly underline.... the suggested spellings include wooly and woolly. Both can be correct.

Just a note since I am the breeder of the Woolly Blue Jay.....the spelling is important. I gave it that name and the spelling therein. When one searches for that variety by name...having all kinds of illiterate spellings...just confuses the google search. When I name tomatoes I Google the spellings very carefully to see if the spelling is appropriate and if there are any hits with the exact spelling so that I don't infringe on someone else's variety.

Wooley is a common misspelling of Woolly or Wooly. I had a dilemma years ago wondering what was the correct spelling of Woolly. Dictionaries use woolly..... sometimes US, wooly, and both spellings are legit but one million more hits with woolly than wooly.

I agonized often myself with the spelling-woolly-as it looks awkward as if too many letters. The Tomato Genetics genes describe Wo as wooly....and that is part of the problem ....who is right?

Three years ago I needed a name for one of my tomato lines. I was in the Seattle area... University District's The Woolly Mammoth Footwear. I noted the spelling Woolly and decided to honor that spelling for my SEATTLE'S BLUE WOOLLY MAMMOTH. Many of my woolly blues are from that selection of F-2 seed.

Since I am using the story of how I came up with the name/spelling of woolly.....I would like folks to use the name I started with.

[goodwin]

Tom - Thanks for the correction. I think I may have misspelled it when I made the markers for the plants. It certainly is an unusual tomato. I'm also growing some 'wooly' lines from TGRC and crossing for cold tolerance. Now if you could just send some of that wonderful Washington rain our way!

Steve, the only ones that I've tasted this season are the early ones I have, but I'm anxious to do a comparison with the others. I really like the Speckled Pink and Black Shadow. It seems I am better able to judge the ripeness with those and the Bosque Blue than I am with the Select, which is so dark. It needs to be picked a bit early, I think. Anyway, I will post the brix levels in a couple of weeks as we enter the prime season. How are yours doing? The Strawberry Tigers are not striping up much this year. Too hot, maybe?
Lee

[frogsleap farm]

In contrast to the approach Tom Wagner describes in a recent post, whereby he is backcrossing some of his "blue" lines to the original wild accessions from witch Aft and atv were contributed to P20, OSU Blue, Indigo Rose, etc. - I've been backrossing my P20/OSU Blue derived lines in the other direction, to the best tasting red/pink/purple and green fruited plants in my breeding program. Although some of the now available, not yet stable, Aft/atv breeding lines are indeed a taste improvement over OSU Blue/P20 (and Indigo Rose), I haven't grown one yet that competes with the best tasting non-blue tomatoes growing side by side in my nursery. Ever the optimist, I think this last generation of crossing might do the trick - the F1's (MBC3's actually) were excellent last year, now to find the Aft/atv homozygous F2 segregates this summer.

In preparation for a fungicide application to control Septoria (a very bad year in MN so far for this disease), I removed lower leaves that were badly infected. There was a fair amount of variation in level of disease incidence, and generally the Aft/atv lines appear to be a little more tolerant. This was generally true across more than a dozen "blue" breeding lines (including a few from Tom), interplanted with several dozen more non-blue lines. If there is a low level of tolerance perhaps linked to Aft or atv and hitch-hiking along from the wild species in these "blue" lines, Tom's approach at backcrossing to these wild relatives might pick that up.

Some interesting recent news also on delayed ripening of Aft/atv types, but I'll post that separately.

[frogsleap farm]

I've been crossing away from the background P20 as fast as possible, retaining Atf and atv and hopefully leaving the badness behind. Typically with crosses to exotic sources, you introduce one or more valuable traits, and then through some sort of backcrossing (or modified backcrossing) program introgress the novel traits into elite germplasm. This striped cherry is a MBC2 F3 line that finally appears to have shed the distinctive P20 related aftertaste - and captures the full flavor of a great tasting cherry. We'll have a large F4 population to select from next year.

[goodwin]

frogsleap,

I hope you can post some new information on your endeavors. We are continuing to work on some lines here as well. This one shows nice contrast and the flavor is much improved from the OSU and P20. It's another cross out of Bosque Blue.
Anyway, the best of holidays to everyone!
Lee

[goodwin]

A quick status report - these blue varieties are just beginning to set. I've been working with some striped ones as well.
We are finally getting some warmer weather. About 150 plants are in the ground now.

Lee

Several messages back, it says that blues came from wild tomatoes. Which species was it?

[Fusion_power]

Aubergine (Abg), Anthocyanin fruit tomato (Aft) and atroviolaceae (atv) are genes introgressed from the wild species Solanum lycopersicoides, S. chilense, S. cheesemanii, respectively. The original introgression from wild species into cultivated tomato was done by other researchers. We discovered that when you combine these genes, you get an intensification of the pigment. The ‘Purple Smudge’ variety has a gene similar to Aft but it comes from a different wild species (S. peruvianum).

"aft" and "atv" are the two found in Indigo Rose. There is also at least 1 minor modifier gene that intensifies the color. It is not described in the literature, but can be easily demonstrated by crossing Indigo Rose with a regular tomato and checking the segregating offspring.



In addition, there are several physiological traits that were bred into Indigo Rose such as having small leaves with an open canopy that allow light penetration to the fruit. These traits boost anthocyanin levels by sunlight exposure of the fruit.

[Fusion_power]

double post

[goodwin]

C. Rick collected some of the first wild samples (S. chilense) with the gene near the border of Peru and Bolivia in 1956. I don't know if any of those original accessions are still available.
Lee