Of the wild tomato species, Solanum, pennellii has been the most difficult for me to work with.
1- The seeds are very small. Therefore young plants are also small, and delicate. Highly susceptible to damping off.
2- The root system seems weak and fragile. Seems like a little disturbance kills the plant. The plants haven't sent out roots from the stem, so growing cuttings is problematic.
3- The type of soil it grows in has a huge impact on plant growth.
I managed to grow a respectable amout of seed this year in pots, that were shaded mid-day, and received morning and afternoon sunlight. The potting mix was 100% compost. Not just any compost, but a specific batch of compost, which is the only type of compost/soil that the plants did well in out of about a half dozen that I tried. Solanum pennellii seems to do better if it is misted rather than irrigated, so I watered with a jet of water across the plants, rather than irrigating the soil.
So for those of you attempting to grow Solanum pennellii, I highly recommend starting seeds in a dozen different potting mixes, and then choose to grow your population in the one in which it thrives. And minimize transplanting. Maybe it wouldn't be an issue in a high humidity climate, but for me, where it is super arid, I need every advantage I can get.
I have yet to successfully grow a S pennellii plant in an open field that receives once a week irrigation, and full sunlight. I did raise one plant this year in which I put the tomato and pot directly into a bed, so that the plant could have it's preferred soil, and stretch into the native soil as needed for additional
moisture. But the plants that were grown in pots only did better.
Solanum pennellii is self-incompatible, and the shape of the anthers is cylindrical rather than conical. The stigma is exerted to highly exerted. The leaf shape is highly conserved in the offspring of interspecies hybrids with domestic tomatoes.
I grew F2 hybrids this summer of a cross between domestic tomatoes and S pennellii (Thanks Andrew). There were huge differences in vigor between plants.
I planted some seed for pure penellii you sent and got a single seedling. It died shortly after transplanting.
Of the F2 penellii Andrew produced I had about a dozen plants but only one produced seed.
I suspect that one plant will have had a tremendous selection pressure and it's offspring may have a much better success in my 2019 garden.
I tried planting pure pennellii seedlings once and failed miserably. The seedlings were tiny and thus were slow and weak. I think died from a weird combination of lack of water and too much water. Misting would have helped. I wonder if nearly pure sandy soil would have helped. I'm out of seed for it but i like the conserved leaf shape and would like that trait backcrossed and maybe some of the waxy leaves preserved or combined with peruvianum traits. Pennellii is supposed to conserve water during the day as drought tolerance and open pores open at night, so night misting might work best. Peruvianum is supposed to have really deep drought tolerant roos, so a combination of those traits would be highly interesting. All of the wild tomato species are nearly impossible to root cuttings (i have managed one rare one of peruvianum), but having a joint and/or pre-scarring some tissue may help). The pennellii-[domestic] hybrid F1s grow like monsters and root cuttings mid-way between wild and domestic.
Pure sand was one of the potting soils that I tried with S pennellii. I also tried various mixes of sand/coir/compost. Growth was tremendously better in one of the pure composts. The differences in growth between different potting soils was dramatic. It was obvious to see which soil they thrived in. Thus I recommend growing S pennellii in two phases: grow some sacrificial plants to determine which soil is best, and then to grow the real plants in that soil.
I have one bin of soil which I am reserving only for the purpose of growing S pennellii.
Maybe we should learn to graft tomatoes and graft the pure pennellii onto the hybrid?
One small branch of my penellii f2 I dug up is wilting oddly. I left it in a saucer of water for a few days. Maybe it's getting over watered.
Quote from: William S. on 2018-10-22, 05:16:50 AM
One small branch of my penellii f2 I dug up is wilting oddly. I left it in a saucer of water for a few days. Maybe it's getting over watered.
It's possible. The pennellii hybrids do not root the quickest when taking a cutting, but compared to most wilds they at least root. I suppose that is also a trait that could be highly variable and segregating in an F2 since Joseph also saw vigor highly segregating.
My pennellii are doing very well this year.
I have an pennellii plant from seed from Joseph that he grew the mother of isolated in a crossing matrix so it may be a cross that is doing fine and setting some fruit. I have an F1 pennellii from a single seed Andrew sent that is setting lots of fruit. A extremely vigorous putative three way cross with habrochaites from seed Joseph sent. These three are within easy pollination distance of one another. Have only one plant from last years seed. Nothing special about it. Have a lot of F3 plants, except for three way, not noticing a lot of fruit set yet, but blooming well. Some are forming rigid upright bushes and others are quite sprawling.
That's awesome. I only have one F2 plant this year, it is large and doing well and setting some fruit. I tried crossing it with pollen from Joseph's big hill. What what be really awesome would be pennellii x peruvianum hybrids. And mine kinda resembles some peruvianum traits, but is hard to tell. What I can tell you is the bumblebees that year were all over the peruvianum flowers and every so often they would visit the pennellii. So if they are compatible, some or all of my F2 line could have peruvianum genetics. But I have no idea.
Three way, f1, and mostly penellii plants are setting fruit well. Haven't found a fruit yet on any other penellii F3 plant. Including the lone descendant of last year's dozen plants. Maybe they are contributing pollen though. This is the second year of reproductive difficulties in Penellii crosses for me.
Some thoughts:
Try hand pollinating more?
plant more plants next year. Including more from packets of pure penellii seed. Try to get more S alleles into population.
Maybe my complex of bees lacks a species that's particularly effective?
Anyone else experiencing reproductive difficulties with penellii?
Quote from: William S. on 2019-08-12, 06:23:23 AM
Three way, f1, and mostly penellii plants are setting fruit well. Haven't found a fruit yet on any other penellii F3 plant. Including the lone descendant of last year's dozen plants. Maybe they are contributing pollen though. This is the second year of reproductive difficulties in Penellii crosses for me.
Some thoughts:
Try hand pollinating more?
plant more plants next year. Including more from packets of pure penellii seed. Try to get more S alleles into population.
Maybe my complex of bees lacks a species that's particularly effective?
Anyone else experiencing reproductive difficulties with penellii?
when i tried buzzing the pennellii hybrid flowers this last winter i noticed no pollen when compared to a domestic and galapagense. So, yeah, perhaps try hand pollinating more. A lot more. i had some success with that experiment using the walnut oil and water idea. It also seemed like the pollen needed something like that to stick to the stigma.
Wonder if it is a pollen sticking sort of issue. I think my base response to this problem in some ways is that I am liable to get penellii seeds from three great penellii descended plants. So forget the rest. Still why so problematic in the F3? Seems like each generation should be more sorted. Also I should really check every plant for berries, we might be talking about a dozen plants again. Maybe I've missed another producer.
Also of my three plants that are producing for sure. One of them came from a packet of penellii seed Joseph grew last year but isolated from other penellii plants so could represent a hybrid. If so it seems mostly penellii but it is surviving without much care. Also I have made a habit of not watering that side of the bed. The roots should theoretically be able to reach water, from the soaker hose on the other side, but none gets right to the plant. So Josephs efforts to adapt penellii seem to be paying off.
Found two more plants with fruit and a bakers dozen without. Wonderful flowers on many of them, just no fruits. Next year will work on introducing more S alleles.
Got first two fruits picked from the F1 Andrew sent.
8. Interspecific hybrids (2).
LA4135 F1 S. lycopersicum VF36 × S. pennellii LA0716. This hybrid is useful as a rootstock.
We use it for maintenance of S. sitiens, and sometimes S. juglandifolium, and S.
ochranthum.
LA4488 F1 S. lycopersicum NC 84173 × S. pennellii LA0716. A rootstock hybrid with ToMV
resistance.
It should be noted that if you got F2 seeds from me the first round they were from accession LA4135. The F1 seed I sent William is from line LA4488 with ToMV resistance in its domestic tomato pedigree.
I noticed my pennelli hybrids are the first to show signs of Late Blight. Has pennelli itself resistance?
Google quickly found a pdf article for me with a 2007 study. "Resistance to Phytophthora infestans in Lycopersicon pennellii"
Sounds like they found something useful, however they suggested combining it with other known traits from hirsutum and pimpinillifolium. Also it's quite probable it's not in all pennellii.
Thanks! Do you have personal experience with your plants?
No Phytophthera infestens only happens rarely here. When it does it affects the local seed potato industry and gets in the news.
https://lateblight-rs1.climate.ncsu.edu/2019-map/
Wonder how updated this map is.
Quote from: William S. on 2019-08-31, 07:41:56 AM
https://lateblight-rs1.climate.ncsu.edu/2019-map/
Wonder how updated this map is.
That's pretty up to date. Latest report listed is 8/27 and there's probably going to be more reports listed in the next week.
In 2019 I got lots of seed back despite a lot of sterile plants among the F3s. That mostly penellii plant, the three way, and the F1 all produced a lot. The F3s produced some.
Last year Joseph Lofthouse sent me a packet from a penellii plant he grew isolated from other penellii plants but exposed to penellii hybrids and other tomato species. Somehow I managed to grow one clump and because the roots are fragile I only transplanted it as a clump and only one plant from the clump bloomed. It grew with penellii hybrids (from Andrew Barney). Presumably those were the pollen parents. I've been calling it "purish penellii"
One alternate possibility is that they self. I can't completely rule that out yet.
I did plant the remaining original packet.
I also planted some truly pure penellii also from Joseph. It's doing great too.
Thanks to years of Josephs grow outs I would say that Solanum penellii genetics are quickly becoming useable for northern breeders. These plants are quite vigorous without special soil or particularly special care. Other than I do not transplant them roughly.
It also represents a smidgeon of a road not traveled for me because potentially I could do a really huge grow out of these genetics. Why no leaf segregegation yet? Should I simply grow many more plants? Should I just seed a flat thickly to look for leaf segregation?
For now I think I will save my large envelope of 2019 seed. Also save seed from 2020. I'm sure it will be interesting to keep growing this line. Hopefully fruit characters will be variable.
Last summer there was one plant among my Solanum pennellii that had fruits that were dramatically larger than is typical for my variety. I saved seeds from them, and planted them with the rest this spring.
Here is my Peruvianum x Penellii pot newly transplanted.
One other thought I've had is that as the Penellii germplasm seems to be rapidly improving in adaptedness and vigour it gets more and more useful. Maybe making the desirability of peruvianum or arcanum or chilense less.
I still really like peruvianum. I wonder if there are any peruvianum introgression lines. I planted Joseph's improved peruvianum and fairy hollow mixed with best wild. I also have another planting of the seeds I saved from that suspected habrochiates x pimpinellifolium cross. I'll get what I get from the wilds this year, but hopefully something good.
"Some of the introgressions are quite large according to the article. A common one from Peruvianum is ToMV resistance to tobacco mosaic virus which comprises about 70% of chromosome 9."
Quote from myself and what was that resistance in that other penellii x line you sent me last year Andrew?! Yep ToMV you said it yourself earlier in this thread! A big little chunk of Peruvianum is floating around in one of my big packets of penellii x domestic from last year.
i couldn't find any evidence of available introgression lines for S. peruvianum, but i did find several in grin and tgrc of F1 hybrids that i didn't know existed. I think i may request them. I found a research paper that mentioned something about pseudo F2's. I am assuming these pseudo filial lines are based on the fact that peruvianum is self incompatible and they needed to breed the various hybrids together maybe.
I'm under the impression the closest relatives that peruvianum might cross to are chilense and chmielewskii (though arcanum is in the same group as chmielewskii). William weren't you growing arcanum? I think i originally wasnt interested in it, but i think i may be now. I really want to work with chmielewskii now though.
Yep the two lines of Arcanum grew great G2 is planted. Supposed to produce 0.2 seeds per pollination of domestic. So five pollination per each seed. These two accessions supposed to not work with Peruvianum though. However, all indications are it's a lovely species to work with in its own right.
I have struggled to grow Solanum pennellii, due to it's inability to grow in my fields. I had best success growing it in pots, in one particular potting compost. Over the past 4 years, I have been successively approximating open field conditions, and selecting for survival.
During the 2020 growing season, I grew about 100 Solanum pennellii in an open field, in the field's normal soil. About 7 plants produced fruits. More than that may have contributed pollen.
During the 2021 growing season, I wanted to grow only elite self-incompatible lines in my fields, and didn't want them contaminated with wild genetics. Therefore friends grew out patches of Solanum pennellii for me. They were planted into open fields. Both patches thrived, producing the largest plants yet. Yesterday I collected the last of the seed for them.
So that's a heck of a founder's effect, but at least now, I have a population that can grow in my fields without coddling.
That seems like it follows the pattern with wild tomato species. They grow in very different ecologies in South America but they have enough diversity to adapt.
Quote from: Joseph Lofthouse on 2021-11-17, 10:43:15 PM
I have struggled to grow Solanum pennellii, due to it's inability to grow in my fields. I had best success growing it in pots, in one particular potting compost. Over the past 4 years, I have been successively approximating open field conditions, and selecting for survival.
During the 2020 growing season, I grew about 100 Solanum pennellii in an open field, in the field's normal soil. About 7 plants produced fruits. More than that may have contributed pollen.
During the 2021 growing season, I wanted to grow only elite self-incompatible lines in my fields, and didn't want them contaminated with wild genetics. Therefore friends grew out patches of Solanum pennellii for me. They were planted into open fields. Both patches thrived, producing the largest plants yet. Yesterday I collected the last of the seed for them.
So that's a heck of a founder's effect, but at least now, I have a population that can grow in my fields without coddling.
:)
That is great news!
I had a complete failure when it came to tomatoes (especially wild) tomatoes, mostly due to poor potting soil on my part, lack of attention early on, and extremely busy year. I've been more than embarrassed to mention it. More or less lost all the good seeds I had wanted to work with (especially the S. peruvianum hybrids from the USDA and TGRC lots). Hearing others have such good success has been nice to hear. Hoping to contribute to this project again in the future, though collecting seed again will be difficult. I guess major failures happen, so I've been trying to learn from my mistakes and take any success this year to be more meaningful. I did find a really tasty dwarf orange cherry tomato from the Sprouts super market this year (it even has the green shoulder gene), so it may be my favorite domestic tomato yet.
What i understand is that S. pennellii has the most potential to give some new / fruity / tropical flavor
It is the wild species at the foundation of Q-panamorous series
Joseph describe several lines with tropical flavors. Not offered to the public at this moment.
William has 'The One' with persimmon flavor. Not offered to the public at this moment.
Any other that i forgot ?
Some introgressions from pennellii could be useful for the lucky ones having access to TGRC :
- LA4053 (I 4-4) (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA4053) - Identification of a Solanum pennellii Chromosome 4 Fruit Flavor and Nutritional Quality-Associated Metabolite QTL (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf063756b)
- Introgression lines with salt tolerance (source (https://gcris.iyte.edu.tr/bitstream/11147/4958/1/4958.pdf))
- seed germination and seedling vigor (source (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304423821002417))
- High brix (source (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304423813000691))
Solanum pennellii can be a source for some late blight resistance different from PhX or resistance from habrochaites
https://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/pdf/10.1094/PDIS-91-8-1045
Now that The One is not a single plant anymore but a whole generation it has some variability and some uniformity. There was one plant that was like some of the sterile F2 penellii crosses and looked like a penellii. The flavor was variable I don't think I found a bad one but it is possible that they vary in texture from pepper like to normal and in flavor from normal tomato to close to their mother. I don't think we ever found the equal of the mother. I think they turn orange and then eventually red.
Most of them seem to produce very few seeds. Found one tomato that produced a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of the offspring represent crosses with other promiscuous tomatoes last year and if most were selfed. I also grew it with Little Pumpkins and their are three clear little pumpkins plants but I think some of the little pumpkins offspring did not come true to their mother and thus represented crosses.
Still as a group they still give me more hope for chasing flavor than the run of the mill promiscuous project project tomatoes from 2020 and 2021. I need a new name though. Maybe "S34,S35,S36 ? or 2020 Bicolor ? Fruity flavors?"
I didn't get any successful hand crosses made with it in 2022. However I had it in three possible crossing blocks. The greenhouse, MMM & MMS, and the diversity garden. I have seed of MMM saved from the one block and The one saved from all three. So if it naturally outcrosses we will find out.
This plant, and one similar, showed up in my population of Solanum pennellii. They seem off type, so I planted them at the end of the row where I can watch them. The flowers may tell more of the story.
I expect 5 round leaflets without serrations. This plant has 11 leaflets on the main rib.
pennellii-20260528.jpg
pennellii-20260528-close.jpg
I grew a really nice population of Solanum pennellii in the greenhouse this spring. Lost half of them the day after up=potting due to inadequate water, but didn't have damping off problems this year. It seems to help to use a light/airy potting mix.
solanum-pennellii-20260528_122216.jpg
Based on phylogenetics, it may be easier to first cross S. pennellii with S. chmielewskii. chmielewskii is still difficult to grow but probably quite a bit simpler than pennellii
Solanum lycopersicum, 13 closest living relatives
┌──•───────────────── S. ochranthum [Colombia, Ecuador, Peru]
│ └───────────────── S. juglandifolium (walnut-leaved tomato) [Colombia, Ecuador, Peru]
│
│ ┌──────── S. galapagense (Galápagos tomato) [Galápagos Islands, Ecuador]
│ ┌──• ┌──•── S. cheesmaniae (Cheesman's Galápagos tomato) [Galápagos Islands, Ecuador]
┌──• │ └──• └── S. pimpinellifolium (currant tomato) [Ecuador, Peru]
│ │ ┌──• └───── S. lycopersicum (tomato) [Andean region]
│ │ │ │
│ │ ┌──• └──•──────── S. chmielewskii (Chmielewski's wild tomato) [Peru]
│ │ │ │ └──────── S. pennellii (Pennell's wild tomato) [Peru, Northern Chile]
─• │ │ │
│ └──• └──•─────────── S. chilense (Chile tomato) [Northern Chile, Southern Peru]
│ │ └─────────── S. peruvianum (Peruvian tomato) [Central Peru to Northern Chile]
│ │
│ └──•────────────── S. habrochaites (hairy tomato) [Ecuador to Central Peru]
│ └────────────── S. neorickii (small-flowered wild tomato) [Southern Ecuador to Southern Peru]
│
└──•──────────────────── S. lycopersicoides (nightshade-like tomato) [Southern Peru to Northern Chile]
└──────────────────── S. sitiens (Atacama wild tomato) [Northern Chile]