F1 surprises

[bower]

I decided to start a thread to show some of the F1 results from the crosses I'm growing out this year... there are many traits of interest with unclear or unknown dominance, in whole or part due to my lack of experience, so some surprises are expected, for me at least!

But first, I have a really surprising result, which seems to contradict what I expected from the known dominance of cherry fruit over multi-locule fruit.
The cross is Kimberley X Zolotye Kupola, which was made very late last fall - only a few seeds were harvested from an immature fruit. Seedlings were all RL like the pollen donor ZK, which shows that the cross was successful. The first fruit are clearly not cherries, and both of the two seedlings I kept appear to be producing a mix of cherry and multi-locule fruit (time will tell for sure).

Any idea what could cause this result? (The "twin" fruit is wierd enough)

[Fusion_power]

Bower, Kimberly is NOT a cherry. I don't know the exact gene it is expressing, but I am certain it is not a cherry. It looks like you crossed two fasciated varieties.

I had to do some digging around to see what genes are being expressed. You have 2 copies of fasciated, 1 copy of el, and one copy of a penetrant gene for round fruit. They will be interesting to watch as they ripen, expect the fruit to make lots of unusual shapes.

[bower]

Aha! I misjudged little Kimberley then.
Thanks very much for the genetic information, it's going to be a lot of fun to watch this one.
I must admit, I had been thinking of the F1 as more of a 'nuisance' generation which is necessary to get the F2 seed... but it's been slowly dawning on me, how much there is to be learned from them - especially for the inexperienced like me.

[bower]

Here is another happy surprise. The cross of PI120256 X Danko is already setting and growing fruit.
PI 120256 was very vigorous but very late to fruit last year, in spite of many small flower clusters along the main stem which were all dropped. It had flower clusters of 4-6 later in the season but never set more than 2-3 for me in a cluster. Danko was a complete contrast to this, a very sparsely foliated and weakly suckering plant with large flower clusters that set with no drops, although the fruit were not grown all at once; some of the first cluster fruit were merrily grown to a good size late in the season. I thought Danko would benefit from some of that vegetative vigour as well as the cold tolerance trait in PI 120256, but I expected the F1 grow to be a tedious wait and a taxing use of space.

The F1 plant has decent clusters of about 7 flowers each, and the first cluster has behaved more like the Danko parent, with at least one fruit well under way and no sign of dropping the other, less than pea sized set. The plant is sturdy and vigorous and should have enough leaf area to be more productive.... high hopes!

[Fusion_power]

PI 120256 was interesting, it is a Costoluto Genovese type with typical vigor and high production. What I saw in it was significant stress tolerance, probably associated with the extreme plant vigor. It is interesting for several reasons, not least of which is flavor.

[bower]

I liked the flavour too, also thin skinned with nice texture, and the fluted shape is very pretty. Most of my fruit were so thin and flat they only made two slices. The ones I saved seed from, I stuffed the little locules with crumbs and cheese and roasted em... pretty and delicious.

[KarenO]

I can offer no information regarding genetics but I am very interested in learning here on your thread Bower. You struck a chord with me when you speak of calling the F1 a "nuisance" generation. In my haste to get to F2 seed I grew mine in the house over winter as you know . The plants were big and vigorous and bloomed at less than 50 days. The fruit tasted good even under such poor conditions and I really should give them a try under good conditions outdoors but since I had my handful of f2 seeds I didn't grow any.
Interesting thread, keep posting.
Karen

[bower]

Hi KarenO,
If you have some F1 seed left it would be cool to grow them out some year, with the parents on side to evaluate the 'combining ability' or heterosis. From what I see published, a random block design with only a couple of replicates is considered enough to draw conclusions. Even you or I could squeeze that in... It looks pretty simple...
Thanks for the encouragement..

[Tom Wagner]

From Bower...

I must admit, I had been thinking of the F1 as more of a 'nuisance' generation which is necessary to get the F2 seed... but it's been slowly dawning on me, how much there is to be learned from them - especially for the inexperienced like me.

The 'Nuisance" hybrids! Yep, I know what that means. Way too many splendid varieties can be put together in a hybrid but disappointment sets in invariably. The traits seem to cancel each other to the point that the tomato is "Ho-hum" and is a waste of space. I make it even worse by crossing F-1's to F-1's and even more cancelling goes on. Rather than illustrating what I mean, I am posting the following which is part of a larger discussion about the Dark Orange Muscat on my tatermater forum.

i.imgur.com/rp3ooFH.jpg

The link above shows what is left of a butchered tomato after seed extraction and tasting.

This is an F-1 cross of Dark Orange Muscat x Skykomish. Both parents are orange but the hybrid is mostly red. The oranges colors seem to cancel each other out and reverts to the wild type which is red. Obviously we don't have the same gene for orange/gold flesh.

The seed extracted is complicated...a four way cross:

.... F-1 (Dark Orange Muscat x Skykomish)
F-1 ___________________________________

.... F-1 (Tegucigalpa Paste x Blush)

I have this seed and hundreds of other freshly extracted seed awaiting my sowing for a late high row tunnel grow out hopefully down in Woodburn, Oregon.

Trying to photograph all of my crosses along with flavor tests and seed processing is taxing to say the least. Hundreds of varieties yet to extract

How many seed are put away for the cross above? About 40

What is my perceived best clone to pull out of this mess? In a generation or two...a long fruit like Tegucigalpa with the Blush trait on a bicolor orange with late blight resistance! I may need all need all forty seed to set up the segregation right off, reselecting during the F-3 progeny

[bower]

Tom, your comments about using F1's in hybrids, in Fred's thread a few days ago, have given me a lot of food for thought.... It's wonderful that you can do that. I have no doubt you'll find something amazing down the line from the forty seeds.

I've just been learning about those tricky 'orange' genes this winter.. three of my F1's are crosses with Zolotoe Serdtse, and from what I understand, the F1 should be red if the orange gene is 'tangerine', but the F1 should be orange-red if the gene is 'Beta'. I just hope I can tell the difference. I'm not even going to think about 'Delta' or "apricot', I'm telling myself the possibility is too remote to consider, at least until I run into a surprise down the line. Yep, the F1 fruit may be ho hum, but learning something about the genetics will make it worthwhile. And ho hum, it'll be sauce for the winter.

So far, Zolotoe Serdtse X Black Early ("Zosbe") has set the first fruit of the lot. ( ZS hasn't set yet either). The fruit is too small to be certain of the shape, but so far looks a bit like mother.

[Tom Wagner]

Just thinking of the fruits that I opened up for seed extraction in the last two days
involving the "orange' genes.

Gold Keeper crossed to Yellow Trifele resulted in gold fruit.

Flaming Burst crossed to King Umberto resulted in red fruit.

Skykomish crossed to Brandywine resulted in red fruit.

Hipa Gold Dwarf and Pixie Olympic Gold Dwarf, both had crosses with red fruit

Brady Bunch crossed to Orange Fleshed Purple Smudge were red.

Each of the lines above had different ancestry of different 'orange' flesh (gold).

I made an extraction of F-1 seed of F-1 Sun Sugar to Paul Robeson...and the seed will be sown soon for a fall crop. I expect 50-50 orange fruit. My grower/cooperator likes both of these varieties, therefore I will offer him some F-2 seed next January out of the 'orange group which will segregate 75-25 in favor of the 'orange'.

I have several plants of the Delta about ready to bloom. I have to make time to swing by the many plots I have to make crosses with it.

Other hybrids evaluated today indicate that they are 'finished' hybrids. I can test them again to see if I want to market them directly and produce more seed.
A beautiful mahogany brown is tentatively named Kodiak Dawg. All of the combining traits seem to be in unison for a good flavored hybrid with high yields and quality.

My guess is that about 10 to 20 % of my hybrids could be considered candidates for hybrid release, but even then half of those could be improved with a few tweaks. With thousands of hybrids made over the last few years....maybe 100 could be contestants.

http://i.imgur.com/4kIcIdY.jpg One of three totes yet to do

[snugglekitten]

Bower, really excellent photos.

Right now I have a few tomatoes at F5 both from the same parents, but I took them in two different directions.

I don't consider f1s a nuisence, but I know where you are coming from.

[bower]

To update on the crosses with Zolotoe Serdtse, all of them were the same 'orange-red' colour, and confirmed that the orange colour is produced by the beta gene.

Also surprising to me, was the dominance of some other fruit characteristics of ZS. The overall shape, firmness of the fruit, strong skin that doesn't crack, slow ripening was seen in all of the F1 offspring, although when fully ripe they were softer than ZS. The three F1's were virtually indistinguishable from each other by looks. The interiors were redder than the outer skin and flesh. Zosanko was different from the other two in texture, mushier and more suitable for sauce, for sure. Taste of all of them was okay, but by texture best suited to processing . Incidentally I dried some ZS in the dehydrator and was really pleased with the sweet result.

The three near identical F1 fruit are shown in the photo on the white plate, with parent Zolotoe Serdtse two fruits above.

[bower]

Just to clarify, not all of the fruit of ZS crosses were heart shaped or pointy, there were some beefsteaky fruit too, although not as many.

As regards the random shapes of the Kimberley X Zolotye Kupola, Fusion was exacly right - lots of different shapes and sometimes all different in the same cluster. Some examples shown below. I also saw the same effect in Rozoviy Flamingo heart X Al Kuffa - some rounded but many heart shapes.

What was really surprising in Kim Kupola is the distribution of pithy cores in these fruit. Maybe environmental effects? It could be, as I did see large cores in some stable OP's as well, especially when they were oddly shaped. The 'bowtie' fruit, is not the most versatile in the kitchen...

One genetic trait I was happy to see in the F1 is the darker red blush in the center of the fruit, from Zolotye Kupola. I didn't expect this to be dominant, I do hope to see it in all the F2's though. Cores and colour shown below, sorry about the yellowness of the picture but it was very sunny back in July....

[bower]

There was some good news out of all these F1.s regarding the taste traits, although I wouldn't say so of the crosses with ZS. Kim X Kupola was also pretty bland when I first tasted it, which I figured may have to do with the half-lycopene in a red X yellow. But the neglected fruit which sat in a bowl turned very crimson and were much tastier the riper they got, so not entirely a waste of space.

But other F1's definitely had some of the taste improvement of the better parent. Rozoviy Flamingo X Al Kuffa had some of the mother's depth of flavour. BEISt Black Early X Indian Stripe was quite good, although not quite as good - a little lacking in the sweetness, in particular - as the IS parent. The best transfer of taste to the F1 was in the crosses with Black Cherry. Taste quality was there in both the Stubche and Fiabche F1's, very nice reds. And I am equally pleased with the F2 cherries of Fiabche, which were all very intense and great eating, so far. I have one black round in the F2 of the ripe ones to date (late planted and outdoors).

So... grow nine crosses, get a few good ones. My guess is that some varieties may be great parents for taste, some not so much? Or perhaps the "Beta" challenge is a bit much at the biochemical level, the poor fruit don't know what they're supposed to taste like?...