Crossing and Bridging with Solanum peruvianum

[William S.]

William, I was reading an article the other day which indicated that S peruvianum can accept pollen from S pennellii. Might be worth exploring as a bridge cross.

Just saw this again and now I have both species in the garden but relatively far apart. Guess I know what I'll be doing on Saturday!

[William S.]

William, I was reading an article the other day which indicated that S peruvianum can accept pollen from S pennellii. Might be worth exploring as a bridge cross.

I think to best exploit this. I should plant a small patch of penellii and one Peruvianum in the center of it.

[Andrew Barney]

I had the chance to sit down and talk with Dr. Bedinger last fall and she indicated that S. peruvianum would be very difficult if not impossible to get crosses with. If it is as hard as she indicated, but perhaps not as impossible as she thinks then I think it could be done with some effort.

[William S.]

Though there is always the exciting possibility that we will get rare crosses, and those rare crosses will be impossible to get any offspring from!

[William S.]

Though honestly there are three avenues that I see right now for crossing in Solanum peruvianum.

1. Solanum arcanum and Solanum chilense bridging lines.

2. Solanum penellii bridge

3. Embryo rescue

I think I would be pursuing the embryo rescue a little more heavily if I didn't have a three year old and had more free time. Might be nice to have a little bit of a set up too in terms of indoor growing. It would be nice to make about 100 pollinations and then do a big tissue culture day. Its not insurmountable, its just larger scale than I am set up for at the moment.

Then there are of course some preexisting strains with some peruvianum in them, A. proving it can be done, and B giving us something to work with for peruvianum traits should we fail otherwise.

My first year working with the Arcanum bridging lines it seems a promising species for us northern growers. I grew it with our peruvianum and entirely expect some hybrids in the second year grow out. If I could get hybrids with the arcanum x domestic, and arcanum x peruvianum I would think the resulting hybrid swarm should allow some transfer of genetics.

For this potential penellii bridge- we already have penellii x domestic thanks to Andrew and penellii x habrochaites x domestic material due to subsequent crossing with the habrochaites crosses. If we got penellii x peruvianum than we have a existing hybrid swarm it could cross into.

Also someone hinted somewhere that pimpinillifolium might cross more readily with it than domestic... Andrew- you sent me a pimp type with exserted stigmas last year.

In my ~2 envelopes of seed from domestic exserted plants I dusted heavily with pollen I did dust with Arcanum as part of the mix. So that rare fertile 0.2 rate seed could be in there somewhere.  I think that I will put one domestic exserted in the Arcanum patch this year and one peruvianum in a purish penellii patch. Also Bumblebees- Wish I could grow out all my seeds- that rare hybrid could be in one of those envelopes

[Nicollas]

From TGC 38 and TGC 33

One way is to limit the peruvianum genepool to LA1708 and LA2172 which can be crossed with tomatoes (but cant act as a bridge to other accessions)

(i've not found how to insert attachments at a specific place in the message ?)

[William S.]

Hmm, I reread the article that led me to the arcanum accessions in the first place and it confirms that. The chilense accession is the really promising one in that article, and not just because it has 0.8 seeds per pollination vs. 0.2 for the arcanum, but because they succeeded in crossing it with peruvianum as well.

Unfortunately the chilense is much harder to grow and I haven't yet attempted it in 2020.

Fortunately the arcanum is interesting in its own right. Just not as a bridge.

That second page you posted. Crossing the F1's seems an interesting possibility which could lead to an arcanum based promiscuous tomato line or an introgression. Interesting.

[Andrew Barney]

I would think logically the ones shown to be closer to each other on this genetic family tree might have better chances at crossing. If that is true then I would expect Chilense to be one of the closer ones to cross to peruvianum. The next closest that we are working with is pennellii or habrochiates.

Maybe we should try with a habrochiates-pennellii hybrid?

I need to look up some of the other species again. I want to say S. neorickii crossed easily with domestic tomatoes. But I can't remember.