Arthropod and Insect Resistant Tomatoes

[William S.]

Hmm, doubt I need to resort to bringing in stems. They detach pretty readily. I'll let them sit awhile. Left a bunch on the plants. It's only the couple or three easterly most clumps producing. Plants on the west end must have been too crowded. Still should be some decent genetics still. Definitely a process of adaptation going on of some kind. I bet this is enough to replace the seed I planted.

[William S.]

I picked some more berries yesterday from the Solanum galapagense LA 1410 that Andrew sent me my starter seed on a few years back. It went well this year I got quite a bit of seed from my ~7 plant clump which grew straight up and was self supporting. It has tiny flowers.

Andrew said he thought we should grow out the seed and distribute it. I said oh no, you would need an ounce. The thing is though you could grow far less because the seed is tiny. Some of it washes through when I try to rinse it. I bought some coffee filters but I forgot them at my parents place. Far better though to slowly rinse the seed by letting it sink and tilting the water out. Not sure how many plants you would need or how big. However I can grow an ounce of seed for a regular tomato variety with maybe ten to twenty plants normally. I suspect a similar ratio might be at play with galapagense for the same number of seeds if not the same weight.

The tiny flowers are a nuisance to work with though. Hardly produce any pollen.

I planted a few seeds the other day. Maybe in a couple months I'll have flowers and can make a cross with the four MMS x BH plants.

If not I have plenty of seed and I plan to surround an exserted stigma plant next year. Ideally a PL MMS x BH F2 but who knows?

Speaking of flowers the ones on the current plants frosted off- but the plants in main were fine. All those hairs may be mechanical frost protection. Intriguing no? The nearby plants were not fine and are about half dead.

[William S.]

I inspected the LA 2329 today. Picked one more berry. Have some seeds drying. Most of the first baggy I now deem not ripe but a few were. There are quite a few on the plants but I think they need some more time. They may not get it.

Still looks like maybe a couple hundred seeds from at least two plants. Interesting. Plants planted out in gardens need more space per plant than potted ones.

Very curious if any of the tomatoes planted in the LA2329 crossing block actually crossed with LA 2329. The bees behavior I observed might indicate crosses will be rare. Hopefully not none existent though! If I don't find any I will surely plant R18 G3 next to LA 2329 next year. It strikes me as having the most habrochaites like flowers of the hybrid lines. I would have this year I think if I could have tasted it in advance.

[William S.]

Set the sprinkler on the LA 2329 last night. Hoping it makes it through this mornings frost. Some more berries look close.

[William S.]

Picked the remainder of the LA2329 habrochaites berries today. Picked whole clusters hoping for some ripening off the plant. Found a few big ones. One of the biggest pictured. Suspect some are ripe or will ripen thus doubling my numbers or better from the few hundred.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

William sent me ten seeds from LA2329. I grew them in a clump, in a patch with other Solanum habrochaites. They flowered profusely, and were tolerant of the early fall frosts. Some plants made fruits. Today, I extracted about 300 seeds from fruits that were collected many weeks ago. They have that trait I love in some varieties of S habrochaites of bold leaves. I love the large flowers. The bruising on the anther cones indicate that the bees do also.

The clump in the right/foreground of the whole garden photo is LA2329. The other yellow flowered plants are Solanum habrochaites, or [habrochaites X (domestic x habrochaites)]. Also in the field (not shown) was one F1 hybrid of [Brad x Solanum  habrochaites].

[William S.]

I put away the second and last envelope of LA2329 not long ago. It did indeed at least double what I got. A few more weeks though and it would have been thousands more.

Next year I think I'll grow ten plants of it but will give them the same amount of space. Hopefully there will also be hybrids but can't count on it for sure as it was a crossing block not deliberate crosses.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here's a movie of the F1 interspecies hybrid that was growing in the same field as LA2329.

[William S.]

Extreme vigour!
I thought there would be a few F1 habrochaites show up spontaneously by now in past years but still haven't detected one! Like in 2018 when I direct seeded so much Blue Ambrosia or this year 2021 when I direct seeded a large amount of potentially crossed Big Hill Could be some in my seed collection though and could be some from the LA2329 crossing block in particular.

Your assaying of seed size to find this one was intriguing!

My thought on best practices to find that needle in a haystack seed is smaller seed plus careful propagation- direct seeding seems difficult for habrochaites in particular.

[William S.]

Today I started my search for an LA2329 hybrid in the seeds from my 2021 LA2329 crossing block. I planted cells with a packet each of seed from three different promiscuous project mothers from the crossing block.

One mother was slightly inserted stigma wise and only produced at the very end three fruits. Only seed, I think.

Another mother looked good stigma wise but produced empty fruit till almost the end. This is I think the only seed.

A third mother who I called favorite produced seed. I have more seed for it.

I judged all of them to behave in ways which might indicate retained obligate outcrossing.

One fear I have is that pollen will not have flowed from wild to promiscuous. Bees seemed from very limited observation to see them as two different species and collect the pollen separately- traveling from same species to same species. If so, I may not get hybrids even if both interspersed populations were obligate outcrossing. An intriguing but fact sparse hypothesis. My thought is that if so R18 may do better. Though I will be very presently surprised if a high rate of between species crosses arise from this attempt! I really only need one individual hybrid seed/plant to develop from it!

I also have LA2329 crossing block seed mothered by Exserted Tiger, MMS, Big Hill and some promiscuous project plants I have little hope for because they had inserted stigma and produced seed readily. I plan to plant it all in the search for hybrids, so this is just the beginning of the search. Might be worth trying to screen out smaller seeds... That Brad x habrochaites Joseph grew last year was a phenomenon.

On another note, my lone indoor LA1410 galapagense now has super tight buds. Hopefully it will bloom, and I will be able to make a cross with MMS x BH F1 before winter is through and I need to put those tomatoes in the ground outside. Ideally said F1 could be grown this year to get to the F2 but winter is coming to an end. Next winter I may be planting a LA1410 and a LA2329 much earlier for over wintering.

Joseph in his picture above has some tape on his LA2329 flowers. Wonder if he managed a cross?

I did also plant a few seeds of LA2329 which is now itself in the third year of my growing it and a genetic mix of two and three generations in my garden with no detectable crossing yet observed.

It seems to me that there are also almost always potentially crossed seeds in my seed stash from plants grown nearby in other past years in 2020 that included some of the BC (Backcross) series of habrochaites Joseph started which were within easy bee striking range of LA2329. Those were essentially wild x wild if crosses happened so xenia effects wouldn't help- would just need to grow the seeds!

Spontaneous and detectable habrochaites x domestic hybrids seem to me to be quite rare but in theory there should be some in my seed stash. Might be worth bulking up some of the suspect seeds from mothers like Blue Ambrosia and Big Hill grown in the mass cross potential gardens of 2017-2019 and just screening them for seed size to look for xenia effects like Joseph did last year to find that Brad x Habrochaites seed. Same with the three larger lots of domestic but exserted mother seed from the 2021 LA2329 crossing block.

[William S.]

Very preliminarily it would seem that of the three promiscuous mothers I've planted seed from so far from the LA2329 crossing block I have no germination from the one that was slightly inserted that produced three fruits at the end of the growing season, and only decent germination from the other two. The tomato seedlings from a special packet where I worked harder to preserve tiny seeds of my favorite promiscuous tomato which was open and exserted with beautiful though off tasting bicolor tomatoes has so far produced seedlings that from the cotyledons alone look to be mostly interspecies hybrids. The tomatoes from the third mother which produced mostly bad tasting seed free tomatoes till the end seem to be mostly domestic looking with some which look very habrochaites like from the cotyledons alone.

Preliminary conclusions from the cotyledons are:

1. possible obligate outcrossing at least in "favorite"! Will see if this extends to all the packets from this plant which are numerous.

2. Very high rates of non-germination I would say from all three mothers (this could confound results potentially).

3. Pollen did make it from habrochaites to the domestic like exserted promiscuous plants. At least for these two seed packets from two mothers. I do remember doing some deliberate pollen moving now where I actually tagged flowers but I remember those tagged flowers not making it. So this is likely but not certainly the result of bee pollination.

4. Very high rate of interspecies hybrids in "Favorite" if cotyleden evidence of short cotyledons and short stems bears out.

So if tomatoes can be:

1. Obligate outcrossing.

2. Facultative (If I am right about the definition of this it means plants that can go either way very similar or the same as exserted plants).

3. Selfing

4. Mixed populations

I would have to say that my preliminary evidence leads me to the preliminary conclusion that in 2021 I had a mixed population within the promiscuous tomatoes and of course overall with the pure habrochaites involved. Which is what I have been thinking since the mothers bloomed of course.

I look forward most I think to planting the large amounts of seed I saved from BIG Hill HX-9, Exserted Tiger, and Mission Mountain Sunrise from the crossing block. I'm curious about their outcrossing rates both with each other as they were adjacent, the promiscuous tomatoes adjacent, and the LA2329 Solanum habrochaites tomatoes adjacent. Maybe I should go ahead and plant some portion of it as any interspecies hybrids may need a little more time to develop.

I might decide to save some seed from "Favorite" as it looks preliminarily like I may already have a good little number of interspecies hybrids from it. May wait for true leaves to emerge to confirm before making any final decisions.

I had thought to plant R18 with the LA2329 block this year if I didn't get interspecies hybrids but now that seems preliminarily extraneous as the F1 hybrids themselves should be very R18 like. Not sure what that means for R18. Though I do have another habrochaites strain for a different project- perhaps I will plant R18 with it.

On another note, I have a very large plant of Solanum galapagense LA1410 with the tiniest buds which have stayed tiny for some time in a one-gallon pot. I hope it survives to make some crossed offspring! I think I will surround an exserted potato leaf plant with LA1410 galapagense if I don't get a controlled cross made before it is too late in the spring, and I have to outplant. I am feeling a little more confident about the method as I see these hybrid-looking cotyledons emerging.

[William S.]

The LA2329 hybrids have the LA2329 smell very strongly. My plan therefore is to follow the smell and the hairiness down through the generations.