Breeding with wild tomato species

[Garrett Schantz]

I may try something similar out in the future.

Hoping to cross Exserted Orange and Purple Smudge next year as well.

[William Schlegel]

I think that would be a lovely cross. I intend to cross exserted orange with one of my blue tomatoes some time. The neat thing about having shared exserted orange is that someone else will probably get it done faster.

Some of the promiscuous project tomatoes seem identical to exserted orange. Exserted orange was hoped to be a open habrochaites cross with Big Hill or cross with hybrids? We thought it had failed for awhile, but given the simularity maybe it succeeded.

A lot of my selection so far this year in the core promiscuous project garden is to pick out the plants with good exserted or the very rare exserted and open flowers. Though I am utterly plagued with empty fruits on many of the most interesting plants. Hopefully at some point those plants will produce some seeds before frost.

Oddly LA2329 has relatively poor exsertion. It's poor fruit set makes me think it evolved with different bees than whatever species of Bombus likes it so well in my garden.

[Garrett Schantz]

Well, finally got around to checking around for fallen fruit under my habrochaites plants.

Noticed a whitefly / aphid problem. Thought it was related to airflow, but they are mostly found on bracts with fruit.

Flowers are very exserted / large. Bees love them as well.

Posting two different habrochaites accessions.

Fruit on left ripens earlier, lighter green color - ripens to a white-ish color, the top portion stays green, some sort of green shouldering.

The fruit on the right is from the highly exserted / large flowered type with whitefly issues. Has a darker sort of green shouldering.

Both have large flowers, should be able to select for better types next year.

[Garrett Schantz]

Found some recovering Peruvianum plants - seems like two survived the blight (blight is no longer spreading as quickly, plants outgrowing it now).

One plant has a few flowers, fruit probably broke down before I realized it was still there. That type was a supposed SC type.


Second type is my favorite plant that I mentioned here before. Got a few fruits from it. Blight could have been the reasoning as to why there wasn't a higher degree of fruit set before.

Second type was from Joeseph's Peruvianum from the Experimental Farm Network. I was initially interesting in the quicker growth, new growth in colder weather in the basement - foliage was different from all of the other types as well.

This type has smaller white/green fruits - some of the lower foliage had some interesting leaves as well. The green fruits appear to have some degree of green shouldering.

The plants also had a tendency to sprawl out and then grow upwards, which was odd.

Pistils and flower structures appear to be a bit messy on this specimen - crooked pistil, some other issues.

Will be saving seed / growing out again next year.



Only posting images from the second type unless someone requests foliage from the other type.


Image 1: Lower leaves, covered by habrochaites.

Image 2: Upper leaves

Image 3: Flowers

Image 4: Fruit

[Diane Whitehead]

The flowers are interesting, though.  Maybe messy but maybe decorative as well.

[Garrett Schantz]

The flowers are interesting, though.  Maybe messy but maybe decorative as well.

Flowers are bunched close together, rather decent sized as well.

Could work well as cut flowers, these take awhile to ripen so that could be a nice usage. Bees don't like this plant anyway.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Curved styles is one of the diagnostic traits for identifying Solanum peruvianum.

[Garrett Schantz]

Leaves are twice the size of some of one of the pimpinellifolium accessions I am growing - quite a bit larger than other Peruvianums as well.

Tried finding more fruits, didn't find any. Managed to grow all of the stems / leaves for a photo I suppose.


None of the Peruvianums have done especially well for me this year. Habrochaites has done great.

Will be trying them again next year.


I might make leaf comparisons next year as I am growing a few different species.

[Garrett Schantz]

Posting some leaves. Largest leaf off each plant / type.

Blue box has some domestics - Wild Gem and Pimpinellifolium are on the far right, they are different looking from typical pimpinellifolium / domestic types.

Red box has some Peruvianum leaves, including the off type peruvianum.

Purple box has a Chmielewskii leaf.

Leaves that aren't boxed in are habrochaites.

[Garrett Schantz]

Mentioned on another post that I went on vacation for 9 days - some seeds germinated during this time and became leggy due to lack of light.

Anyways, the typical Peruvianums are on the left, the "Off Peruvianum" seedling is on the right. Germination on the "Off Peruvianum is rather horrible. Maybe the others will eventually come up - I still have more seeds for it as well.

[Arjan vD]

I found this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSrZvzo0gSw&ab_channel=SOLSeminarsOnline about reproductive barriers in wild tomato species.
Might be interesting if you want to make hybrids.

[William Schlegel]

I found this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSrZvzo0gSw&ab_channel=SOLSeminarsOnline about reproductive barriers in wild tomato species.
Might be interesting if you want to make hybrids.

Currently at 29:04 in video: Bakers Law from 1955 southern and northern extents of Solanum habrochaites are SC because of strong founding effect pressures. Hmm. That also sort of implies that over time SI should overtake the SC. So if we had a large mixed population eventually the SI systen should crowd out the SC system. At least to me. OK going to go back to watch more of the video now.

[William Schlegel]

Ooh at 44:35 video explains that big flowers correspond to SI and small flowers SC.

[William Schlegel]

At 50:19 pollen from one Hab population can be rejected by another but it's a bit complicated and sounds like SI x SI is accepted.

[Nicolas]

That also sort of implies that over time SI should overtake the SC. So if we had a large mixed population eventually the SI systen should crowd out the SC system.

I guess it depends of the success of pollinators ?