Hybrid Production Plans

[Tom Wagner]

I have ambitious plans to make lots of hybrids this year. Imagine me making the cross between F-1 ANNANAS DE LA BOURDAISIERE x F-1 (Orange Purple Smudge x Skykomish)! And in just a week or so from now. Working from location to location starting soon and ending up in August...I will be a happy man if all goes well.



The two rows on the left are tomatoes that I will use to start making hybrids this year. I will likely start the hybrids next week. There will eventually be about 100 lines at this location that will be used in all sorts of crosses...two way, three way, four way, backcrosses and even more complicated. The plants are with a friend who grows tomato fruits for the Seattle markets. I am training an intern to help me make thousands of crosses this year. Each of these 100 varieties will end up with maybe five crosses or more per vine/variety.

Further down the pike will be about 142 other tomato varieties to be used in crosses. Here is a picture taken yesterday of seed sown 2-4-14. With nearly 500 plants I should be able to make lots of crosses soon after I get done with the first batch. I may store some pollen in gel caps and put in the frig for later pollinations.



A later batch of another 125 varieties are following these two batches and will be about three weeks behind the second group. Finding room for all of these has been a chore but it will be completed more or less on schedule.

I have yet another 200+ varieties in San Diego County to be involved in April's crossing work. Those plants will be both in the field transplants in less than two weeks along with greenhouse specimens. More plants will be in the field than in the greenhouse but the crosses will be timed so that I can harvest them at the appropriate times.

I have not even started the seeding for local Seattle outdoor plantings. As I get all of these tomatoes plants organized I will be making weekly crosses so that after the summer is done, I will have attempted maybe 5,000 crosses. The potato crossings will be much more limited but hopefully will number in the hundreds at least.

You would think a retired man of 68 with 61 years of breeding work behind him would know when to stop? I feel good and have the means to do this and building a living library of tomato and potato hybrids along the the ensuing F-2, etc., populations is as good a goal as anything else.

Tom Wagner

[Redbaron]

WOW, just WOW

[Tom Wagner]

Red Baron.....The wow I am hoping for is for my interns to take my work and run with it....listening to me for guidance if they want it. I hope I don't have to rest on my laurels since that would mean be so satisfied with what one has already achieved that one makes no further effort. Besides who want to sit on a laurel....an aromatic evergreen shrub related to the bay tree?


This kind of foliage is half woolly. In my opinion it is one of the prettiest leaf types one can have in their garden. This particular plant is a result of stringing along the half woolly expression through several generations of crossing. Saving the OP seed will result in one fourth of the seedlings being homozygous for the wo gene, half again just like the photo and one fourth regular leafed.

[Salsacharley]

I second the WOW.

What size bags are those in the photo?

Is woolly any relation to furry?

Good growing to you!

Charley

[crmauch]

Originally Posted by Tom Wagner

... As I get all of these tomatoes plants organized I will be making weekly crosses so that after the summer is done, I will have attempted maybe 5,000 crosses. ...
Tom Wagner

Makes the rest of us who dabble in breeding feel like pikers!

Do you go on to stabilize these hybrids? How do you manage the large numbers in F2 and F3 growouts????

Chris

[Cole_Robbie]

Wow from me too.

What makes you so passionate about hybrids? The advantages I read about all relate to profits for either the seed company or the commercial farmer. Does working with hybrids give you more tools and potential as a breeder?

[Tom Wagner]

What size bags are those in the photo?

They seem to be like five gallon grow bags

Is woolly any relation to furry?

I think they are the same. I am using the same woolly gene that I used with my Elberta Girl tomato well over 40 some years ago

Do you go on to stabilize these hybrids? How do you manage the large numbers in F2 and F3 grow-outs????

I will undoubtedly save the F-2's on most all and if I make further crosses that just adds to the mix. I have many short cuts that make selection easier in developing a few good F-3 lines...after that it is simpler. But I inventory lots of seed for re-use later on....even though that might be 10 to 20 years down the road if not the next season. I plan on using those lines that show the recessives quickly....

What makes you so passionate about hybrids? The advantages I read about all relate to profits for either the seed company or the commercial farmer. Does working with hybrids give you more tools and potential as a breeder?

Crossing plants has always been my passion. It is the fastest way to create diversity and the segregation into the F-2 and later filials seems to increase the mutations between unlike allelic combinations....cross overs, translocations, additions and deletions...just to name a few actions. I have so many creations that are true breeding but could use the yield advantage of hybrid vigor...and I see it in many but not all hybrids. So many F-1's made between two unrelated F-2 lines give me unique combinations that defy common sense, and those may be the one-in-a-million type tomatoes. As a breeder....I must stay ahead of the pack...and hybrid seed is a control issue for me. By making in-house hybrids by the thousands and when a few work especially well...this gives me the chance to sell the superior seed for a premium, or to be available as grafted plants only.

I am rooting sucker shoots from some of my rare hybrids as they are pruned.
If the original plant performs exceedingly well...I will have lots of duplicate plants to exploit later in the season. That means that tomatoes that taste and look really great in May will be bearing up to October to tie in the appreciation for a new variety.



I am kinda like a shade tree mechanic. A person willing to learn and perform scheduled maintenance or simple repairs on their own tomatoes rather than being completely reliant on the higher technology of large seed companies.


Many seed companies have realized that F-1 hybrid service is profitable and have designed tomatoes to be unsuitable for seed saving by most independent shade tree growers. Conversely, my hybrids might actually be fun to save the seed from.

[aconite]

Mr. Wagner, you have my utmost respect, to have such desire for improvement of your chosen plant at what you say is an age that many would not embark on such a mission, absolutely stunning. I will be following closely your reports, as a relatively young grower my only regret is that i don't live near enough to volunteer a helping hand. I hope that at some time you decide to write some sort of detailed chronicle of your experiences.
best of luck with your work!