Sungold F1 and Sunsugar F1 breeding with and dehybridization

[William S.]

That makes things clearer B is an accession in TGRC!

[William S.]

There are a lot of old Sungold threads on Tomatoville.

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=5371

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=3641

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=3641&page=3

Lee Goodwin's Ambrosia series was indeed started with a Sungold dehybridization. He followed the foliage scent down through the generations and Fred Hempel did the same. Which means that many of the tomatoes that have arisen in my garden are Sungold descendants. Also, Craig LeHouillier considered making a Sungold cross for the dwarf tomato project. Wonder if he did?

[Roland]

It seems Sungold F1 have very high potential.
But it also seems very difficult to stabilize the good genes.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2165795/which-sun-gold-type-op-cherry-is-the-closest-to-sun-gold-f1

[William S.]

It does seem like the unstable combination in the F1 hybrid is excellent but all the generations I have tasted have been good which I think still goes to show that it is good breeding material. One thing I think that doesn't really need to be done is more attempts to dehybridize it. I am more interested in crosses with it and its descendants. I do think that an open source hybrid like it might be possible with the right combination and given the large number of dehybridized versions and similar open pollinated tomatoes.

I think I need to go through my 2022 grow outs of Blue Ambrosia descended tomatoes and smell their foliage and compare it to the Sungold I am growing. It seems like Sungold has incorporated itself into a good bit of material in my collection due to my early success with an exserted form of Blue Ambrosia.

Exsertion which Sungold is sometimes capable of is probably part of why Sungold and some of its descendants are unstable. They probably outcross with nearby tomatoes creating complications.

Sungold in a way is a good model for some of the potential problems we may encounter with various promiscuous lines of tomatoes. My exserted potato leafs in 2021 grown with others have produced a tremendous crop of hybrids. I really hope a MMS x ET cross is in there! A cross which incidentally would cross Sungold genetics into a line that isn't known to be Sungold descended.

[Andrew Barney]

Wow,  pretty cool.

What are the really good "dehybridized" lines that came out of this? Any in the dwarf project? It would be interesting to take the two dehybridized lines mentioned above and cross them, lol.

[William S.]

All I've tried to date is my own and Joseph's partially dehybridized lines. I'm growing Honey Drop an OSSI dehybridized sunsugar for the first time this year.

I guess I have grown Blue Ambrosia extensively. I was most interested in its superior crossing ability but seemed ok.

I checked Victory seeds and couldn't find a family with sungold as a parent. However, lots of crosses with orange parents.

[Andrew Barney]

Oh ok. Thought maybe you had found something like named dehybrid varieties in your forum reading or commercial seed searches.

[William S.]

Oh ok. Thought maybe you had found something like named dehybrid varieties in your forum reading or commercial seed searches.

I have heard of several:
Big Sungold Select
Ambrosia Gold (and then the whole Ambrosia group of 7 tomato varieties at J&L is all descended from it)
Santium Sunrise (includes some info about crosses with Russian material so not a strait desegregation).
Sungella
Gobstopper

Have not tried them. I am pretty content with just growing Sungold F1 or just a patch of the various F2, F3, F5 whatever Sungold descendants. Would probably grow them out if I got free seed but might also just throw them in the bag with the other Sungold descendants and direct seed the mix carelessly.

Oh, and here is an interesting tidbit from Adaptive Seeds: https://www.adaptiveseeds.com/product/vegetables/tomatoes/tomato-golden-currant-organic/ They say that Golden Currant might be a possible Sungold parent. So we can add that to the list of suspects for Sungold parentage. Incidentally I am growing a Golden Currant this year but I got my seed from HRseeds.

Also check out the fun things that Frogsleap farm was doing way back in 2014 with in part some Sungold genetic descendants.

https://frogsleapfarm.blogspot.com/2014/12/top-ten-tomatoes-2014.html