F1s for the People!

[Tim DH]

I do a huge amount of ‘off season’ reading, to try and maximise the progress I can make in the following year.

Here is a little ‘pot hole’ on my path, which I hadn’t spotted ahead of time!

There appear to be two Moskvich strains!!

An earlier 4-6oz round (heart) fruit and a later 10-14oz flat (beefsteak) fruit.

Tatiana lists both on the same page!! The first two growers reports appear to be incompatible and Tatianas own photos seem to be of a smaller fruited variety. So much so, that she lists it as a ‘salad’.

http://tatianastomatobase.com/wiki/Moskvich

There has been some discussion about Moskvich, its variability and its various spellings, on Tomatoville.

ANYWAY If there is a later beefsteak variety, that is definitely what I have got!

Quite a few people list Moskvich in the UK, but given the ‘habit’ of just cutting and pasting other peoples descriptions, I can’t be certain that the earlier heart variety (if it exists) has made it to these shores.

Obviously, for my Early Red F1, I was attracted by descriptions that seem to emanate from the smaller earlier variety. …. Grrrr

Tim DH

[Tim DH]

The attached table from this publication:

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.16403

Has some helpful suggestions about the relatedness of a number of cultivars.

It particularly focuses on Potato Leaf varieties which is of interest to me & this thread.

Tim DH

[William Schlegel]

It's interesting to see Stupice, Glacier, and Bloody Butcher are closely related. That could inform breeding in that crossing those three likely doesn't make sense. Wish they had even more tomatoes in the study.

[Walt]

I want to throw in my 2 cents worth.  This is theory and may be ofno use..  But 2 cents doesn't buy much these days so here goes.
I took a class from Dr Carl Clayborg in 1977.  He  had been a noted tomato breeder at Cornel.  He told the class that F1 hybrid tomatoes were making it on hybrid corn's reputation and weren't worth the extra cost.  That was 1977. 
About 3 years later when I was a tomato breeder in Niger, I read a brief note titled "First Hybrid Vigor Documented in Tomatoes"  Or something like that.  The paper reported that Florida and Hawaii have similar growing conditions but each had stared with a different set of varieties and each had bred within their population with few or no outcrosses.  So after 50 to  100 generations of seperate breeding, samples from the two populations were crossed, and there was hybrid vigor.
Now this is what came to me while working in 100F (in metric that is real hot) yesterday.  Mexico and Peru have each had tomatoes foe 1000+ years.  And I doubt there was much gene exchange between them.  I'm not saying no gene exchange.  There may have been trade between them before the Spanish and others took over. 
Dr, Charles Rick spent much of his life collecting tomato seeds throughout South America, including Peru, Chili, everywhere.  He collected wild and domestic alike.  Some of you  might have his wild-collected seeds in your own breeding lines now,  But the Rick tomato genetics resource center has all his collected accessions.
So, getting some of Peruvian tomatoes of a certain type from Peru and another of the same type from Mexico should give more hybrid vigor than crosses between European-North American varieties will have.
Someone want to beat me to it?

[William Schlegel]

Walt, I think some of the accessions I've got from TGRC are from Peru and some tomatoes seem to be from Mexico including if I recall correctly Coyote and Mexican Midget. I've been crossing everything with my own lines though. However, I would expect the two accessions of Solanum pimpinillifolium I just crossed with my Mission Mountain project to produce some hybrid vigour next year. Incidentally I used your anther cone transfer advice from a few years back to make the crosses.

[Andrew Barney]

I think walt is suggesting to cross S. peruvianum from one isolated accession in one country with S. peruvianum from another country?

Not between species... if I interpret his suggestion correctly.

I would love to try. Might be a year or two before I am comfortable where I can request germplasm from TGRC again. I do have a new company set up for it though. Need to set up a non residential business address to go with it.

On the other hand William has several peruvianum domestic hybrids that might be bred from different peruvianum accessions?? If the hybrids were crossed with each other that might produce some interesting things. I'm trying to grow them out this year,  but many died. I will get what I get. One is in bloom and has curved exerted flowers similar but different from S. Pennellii. Hope the bees cross it with something compatible.

[William Schlegel]

I think walt is suggesting to cross S. peruvianum from one isolated accession in one country with S. peruvianum from another country?

Not between species... if I interpret his suggestion correctly.

I would love to try. Might be a year or two before I am comfortable where I can request germplasm from TGRC again. I do have a new company set up for it though. Need to set up a non residential business address to go with it.

On the other hand William has several peruvianum domestic hybrids that might be bred from different peruvianum accessions?? If the hybrids were crossed with each other that might produce some interesting things. I'm trying to grow them out this year, but many died. I will get what I get. One is in bloom and has curved exerted flowers similar but different from S. Pennellii. Hope the bees cross it with something compatible.

Andrew I interpreted Walt to be talking more about oh say accessions from Peru in general and not necessarily Solanum peruvianum at all but rather the species that came to my mind is Solanum pimpinillifolium which occurs in both Peru and Mexico. I agree he was talking about within species crosses and I kind of switched that. Though we are drifting away from the F1's for the people idea pretty hard here! Other than this idea that significant hybrid vigour is most likely to come from distant crosses. In which case my cross with a currant tomato from Peru as the pollen parent on a potato leaf is a potential example of a distant cross that might possibly have decent hybrid vigor.

[Walt]

Actually I was talking about common garden tomatoes from common gardens in Peru and Mexico.  Before the European invasion, Peru and Mexico, I think, had little day to day interaction.  It is quite possible that the Inca or pre-Inca and the Aztec, Maya,or pre-Maya knew about each other But I don't think they were sending tomato seeds back and forth all the time.  I don't believe there were two independant domestications of tomato, but if there were, so much the better from the hybrid vigor point of view.
That is not to say that the previous two post aren't good ideas. Just not my ideas.
After I posted yesterday, I went to the tomato germplasm center's web site and looked up some accessions from Peru and Mexico.  In 1949 and 1950, Dr. Rick said "might be a Marglobe grown in unfavorable conditions.  Even back then one couldn't be sure what wasan old heirloom or an imported variety from USA or Europe.
From what I understand, genetic studies show that only a few tomato seeds got to  Mexico from South America where they were domesticated.  But over the centuries mutations built up and natural and human selection restored genetic diversity.  Though not as much as the diversity as in South America where the domestic populations interacted with wild populations.  Then the Spanish took some samples of Mexican  tomato seeds to Spain and these few samples spread across Europe.  Then Europeans brought some samples of tomato seeds to what became the USA.  So there were several bottle necks in modern  tomatoes.  That is why I have been so shocked at the hybrid vigor you folks have found.  You are mostly crossing close relatives.  Not you Joseph.  You have more genetic variation in your populations that the entire tomato seed industry of the USA when Dr. Clayborg said hybrid tomatoes are getting by on hybrid corn's reputation  That was true at that time.  So all of you who are following Joseph's example.  You are all doing a great work.
Still think Peruvian x Mexican is a good idea.  But I read the material transfer agreement and I think it stinks.  But I might try anyway.  Just to see.

[Andrew Barney]

Actually I was talking about common garden tomatoes from common gardens in Peru and Mexico.

Ha! It looks like we have progressed to where we need to be very precise in our language to make sure we are being clear and understood. Which is why I already try to avoid English acronyms and abbreviations so that our many non-English speaking forum users can understand.


But, yes, back to the OP topic. I think this thread will get more interesting next year if anyone is having success at making F1s with known parent lines and testing them next year.

[Tim DH]

Hi Walt,
   Thanks for your two cents, and for all the additional correspondence it generated!

   I agree with your hypothesis that cultivars from geographically distinct areas are more likely to yield vigorous F1s. The initial example you site is Florida and Hawaii. I have been trying to lump freely available cultivars into three broad groups: American, European and East European (xUSSR).

   Your suggestion of accessing TGRC cultivars is interesting, but a little beyond the scope of ‘F1s for the People!’, since TRGC is not exactly publicly accessible! However I was surprised to see how often, over the last few years, cultivars like ‘Moneymaker’ and ‘Ailsa Craig’ were in TGRCs top twenty!

   I was very interested in your passing reference to Niger. I have a Cousin who works as an agriculturalist in West Africa and he was moaning about the price of F1 tomato seed. … Long Term: It would be great to create some F1 recipes that could be used by Co-ops to give seed autonomy back to African farmers.

Tim DH

[Tim DH]

I’ve started the seedling test to check that my F1s are F1s and its already thrown up a surprising result.

I’ve planted 2 seed in each cell... In each column of four cells There’s the mother at one end, the father at the other and two cells of the F1 progeny in the middle. Testing a total of six F1s against the leaf type of their parents. In total 24 F1 seed and 24 Open Pollinated (Selfed) seed. Germination rates for the F1s 23/24 (96%), for the OPs 16/24 (67%).
 
The two seed types were harvested differently. The F1s were fermented (because I wanted ALL the seed). The OPs were selected pips from tomatoes I was eating (because I only wanted a few seeds). If anything, I would have expected the selected seed (OPs) to germinate better!

Apart from that, its difficult to quantify, but the F1 seedlings look healthier.

Possibly, these two observations are the first indicators of hybrid vigour?

[Steph S]

It could be hybrid vigor... but fermented F1 seed vs non-fermented parent seed is a confounding factor, so no way to tell in this case.  At least, fermentation does arguably provide some advantages to the seed at germination time.  1) complete removal of germination inhibitors (parent seeds may just come on a bit later) and 2) lactobacillus spp have other benign effects, including (potentially) the elimination of unfriendly microorganisms (if parent seed completely failed, a possible cause), or simply direct effects on germination (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11738-012-1200-y).
Your F1 seedlings look pretty happy!