Joseph's Tomato Experiments

[joseph]

Carolyn: Thanks for the feedback.

In my garden, Colorado Potato Beetles only eat one species: A wild nightshade weed. Because the beetles are year round residents, I have bred a population of beetles that are averse to feeding on any other species. (Or I have influenced their culture, hard to tell if the preference for the weed is learned, genetic, or both.) I have also bred a population of potatoes, tomatoes, and tomatillos that are not attractive to Colorado Potato Beetles. It is a death sentence to any beetle I find on a domesticated Solanum. It is also a death sentence to the plant. I don't want my plants to be confusing the beetles about what to eat.

I don't have BER in my modern-landrace tomatoes. Because I do not tolerate it. I see it sometimes in new varieties that I'm trialling, but yanking the plant up by the roots gets rid of that problem permanently. No second chances, not later this season, and not next season. In my garden, a variety has to grow perfectly, with the preexisting conditions, or it gets culled. I share my seeds widely. Anyone that wants to test them for BER resistance under their growing conditions is welcome to do so...
I don't grow cylindrical shaped tomatoes, and the fruits tend toward being 2 to 10 ounces, so seems to me that both of those traits predispose my tomatoes to be more resistant to BER. And my limestone/clay soil is full of Calcium and holds onto moisture well.

It is very arid here. That protects my tomatoes from all sorts of micro-organisms that thrive in damp places. I mean really arid. We often have 5% relative humidity on summer evenings. Dew points might be around 20 F for much of the year.. We had dew for a couple days this spring. That was super weird!!!!

I don't know if any tomato diseases exist in my garden. If they do, it doesn't seem like a good use of my time to try to notice and identify them. I'm certainly not going to spray my plants with anything to try to stop a disease. That would require identifying the disease. I select for plants that produce fruit in my garden, regardless of whatever else is going on with them.

Eventually, after I get a population of good quality tomatoes that is self-incompatible, (with genes from wild accessions,) I intend to seek out lots of collaborators in areas that are beset with blights, and rots, etc... Because if every seed in the population is a new F1 hybrid, it becomes trivial to throw hundreds or thousands of new varieties at the problem to try to find some genetic combination or other that is more resistant.

I'm expecting to harvest thousands of seeds of Solanum peruvianum, and Solanum habrochaites this month. They are still fully wild, but if any of you want to screen them for early/late blight tolerance, send me a SASE. I expect to share F1 and F2 hybrid seed as soon as it is available. Everything I do is about sharing and collaboration. The more people we have working on this, the faster the work goes, and the more directions it can branch out into.

I'm sharing seeds all along, but I think that things will really start popping when we get self-incompatible tomatoes fully developed. Collaborators are working with me on the self-incompatible project. More are welcome. Thanks to the collaborators that shared PI, LA and LYC accessions with me. DarJones sent me the original seeds for Jagodka, which came I think from Dan McMurray. That has been a mighty fine tomato for me, and is a key contributor to both the promiscuous pollination project, and to the frost/cold tolerance project. It isn't yet part of the self-incompatible project, but I hope it will be one of these days.

I am approaching plant breeding as an art. That drives the commercial plant breeders batty. I think of myself as a generator of diversity. Thinking of different ways to do things (promiscuous-pollination, self-incompatibility). I'll pass the baton to other folks to select and stabilize formal varieties.

I worked for 20 years as a research chemist. These days, the fewer records I keep, the happier I am. I'm not interested in keeping track of the paperwork to supervise the scoring of families of tomatoes for tolerance to late blight, septoria, or bacterial spot, but I'm very willing to send seeds to people that are.

I'm just a small cog in a tremendous plant breeding undertaking that has been ongoing for thousands of years. Thanks to all the ancient, modern, and future collaborators on these projects.

Originally Posted by joseph

It is very arid here. That protects my tomatoes from all sorts of micro-organisms that thrive in damp places. I mean really arid. We often have 5% relative humidity on summer evenings. Dew points might be around 20 F for much of the year.. We had dew for a couple days this spring. That was super weird!!!!

Wow! I had no idea it was that arid there, especially in the evening, even if not all the time. That ought to be interesting.

[loulac]

Every cloud has its silver lining.
Watering your fields in an arid place requires a lot of work and a heavy financial investment but you don't have to watch heavy dew every morning on your tomatoes, wondering what germs will thrive with it. I follow great advice given by b54red, I can protect 2/3rds of my plants but as I said in an earlier post it's not a fight, it's an endless war. In fact you are giving ammo to those that must fight all kinds of pests, be heartless in your selection, no weaklings allowed !

[carolyn137]

Joseph posted:

(It is very arid here. That protects my tomatoes from all sorts of micro-organisms that thrive in damp places. I mean really arid. We often have 5% relative humidity on summer evenings. Dew points might be around 20 F for much of the year.. We had dew for a couple days this spring. That was super weird!!!!

I don't know if any tomato diseases exist in my garden. If they do, it doesn't seem like a good use of my time to try to notice and identify them. I'm certainly not going to spray my plants with anything to try to stop a disease. That would require identifying the disease. I select for plants that produce fruit in my garden, regardless of whatever else is going on with them.

Eventually, after I get a population of good quality tomatoes that is self-incompatible, (with genes from wild accessions,) I intend to seek out lots of collaborators in areas that are beset with blights, and rots, etc... Because if every seed in the population is a new F1 hybrid, it becomes trivial to throw hundreds or thousands of new varieties at the problem to try to find some genetic combination or other that is more resistant.)

I do understand and I hope you saw my suggestions for what they were,just suggestions.In addition you've made it very clear that yield is your main objective, despite what else might be going on.

Dale Thurber ( seamfaster), a member here and elsewhere,also an SSE listed member, moved to Utah,Cedar City,a couple of years ago. Right now I don't remember if he waters or not, but he is still listing over 400 tomato varieties for sale. There's a thread for him in the Seed and Plant Foum here.

As for collaborators,what happened to that young man,whom I last knew,he was in HS and in Colorado,who was very taken with your work and I thought he was trialing for you.I can't remember his name, but is he still working with you.His main interest was landraces.

And I didn't know you sold seeds. Is there a link for that?

Carolyn

[Starlight]

Carolyn... If you click on Joseph's name, look and you will see the spot that will take you to his homepage. Lots of info and seed list on it. Hope that helps.

Originally Posted by carolyn137

… And I didn't know you sold seeds. Is there a link for that? …

He doesn't have a checkout as far as I've found, but he does mention on his home page that you can exchange a silver dime for some seeds. It does need to be a silver one, though, I'm pretty sure. I also thought he might have been warming to the idea of selling seeds (and maybe he even does it now), but I'm not sure if he does at this time. I probably should have just mentioned the silver part, since I'm not sure about the other. Sorry for the confusion.

Oh, wait. His website does mention money besides silver dimes as an option, too ($5 paper currency and $3 shipping). So, I guess there's a good reason I thought that, since I now remember that the link is where I got the information that prompted me to mention that he offered seeds for sale.

[Starlight]

He also just shares and trades too. : )

[greenthumbomaha]

Hi Joseph -

What a lovely family photo, including your extended vegetable relatives. You and your produce look very healthy and stress free. I've been following your posts for several years, and learned what landrace gardening is from your posts.

I have a corn question for you. Yes, I live in the CORNHUSKER state, Go Big Red, etc. But "I' failed twice at growing corn. Both times , in the same garden but different plots, I got corn smut. The farm was a community garden with virgin soil. They two tries were both ordinary commercial sweet corn varieties. Another grower down the row had good corn but it weeded over. Most corn grown in this state is field corn for cattle, and now ethanol.

My growing partner successfully grew Glass Gem for decoration only purposes. He has a supply of sweet corn from his relative which he generously shares. I would still like to try growing my own little patch of corn again. Do you have corn smut in your climate, and if so have you had any success selectively breeding it out?

- Lisa

[joseph]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

As for collaborators,what happened to that young man,whom I last knew,he was in HS and in Colorado,who was very taken with your work and I thought he was trialling for you.I can't remember his name, but is he still working with you. His main interest was landraces.

We still collaborate closely on a number of projects. Mostly squash, corn, and teosinte. One of the goals of those projects is developing a perennial sweet corn. I don't think that it will be winter-hardy here, but it may be in more southern areas.

Originally Posted by carolyn137

And I didn't know you sold seeds. Is there a link for that?

http://garden.lofthouse.com/seed-list.phtml

[joseph]

greenthumbomaha:

Thanks. That's my sister and nephew. Corn smut pores are wind-borne, so they seem ubiquitous in the environment. We treat it as a delicacy to be savored. That's another of those microorganisms that thrives on dampness. So I see it on a few percentage of cobs. Popcorn seems more resistant than sweet corn or flour corn. Perhaps some cultivars are more resistant than others. If I was losing a whole crop, I'd pay more attention to resistance. But since I'm only losing a few cobs in genetically diverse populations, I just don't save seeds from plants with smut. So technically, I am selecting against susceptibility to corn smut, but its a very casual selection process. If I were more serious about it, I would select against entire families of corn (siblings) if even one member of the family were susceptible.

I keep a supply of corn smut spores in my seed bank. This summer I intentionally tried inoculating some cobs. Didn't work very well. Only 1 try in a dozen was successful.

[loulac]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one to appreciate the family touch added by a picture. Just in case some of us may have missed some of the posts sent by Joseph I suggest having a look page 4 : http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...t=36730&page=4

All the best

[joseph]

I am working on collecting traits for promiscuous pollination of tomatoes into a single population. I have been doing that both through selection, and through manual cross pollinations.

The F1 of the successful crosses are currently flowering in a greenhouse.



One of the crosses I made this year was between domestic tomatoes, and LA1777, Solanum habrochaites, a wild tomato.

Here is an example: The F1 of [NOID domestic red tomato X LA1777]. Of particular note, is that the trait for large, fused flower petals is dominant. The trait for exerted stigmas is recessive.

F1: [NOID Red X LA1777].


I also made a few crosses between domestic varieties. For example, the following photo is from a cross between an F3/F4 of a cross between domestic/wild tomatoes, and a naturally occurring F1 cross between a descendant of Sungold with open flowers and an unknown pollen donor with red fruit. I'm loving that exerted stigma.... Therefore, this week I am attempting to make crosses between these plants, and the previously shown plant.

F1: [WXO x Sun4X]


I am also attempting to pollinate LA1777 with pollen from [domestic X LA1777]. I'm speculating that there might be enough of the self-incompatible genes hanging around for the back-cross to be successful. That would get me the self-incompatible tomatoes that I am looking for. I'm not convinced that LA1777 is fully self-incompatible, but gotta start somewhere.

One of the things that I am loving about the promiscuously pollinating tomato project, is that I am finding naturally occurring hybrids among the plants that I am using for making crosses. So that's like making three-way hybrids or double-cross hybrids. Woo Hoo!!!!

[Starlight]

I know you have been working for a while on producing exerted stigmas. Glad to see your being successful. Nice! Very nice! : )

[ilex]

Are there genes for broken anther cone? I've seen cones open were they meet the petals. Is that fairly common?

I usually don't pay much attention to flowers, but I do get lots of exerted stigmas.