Open Source Plant Breeding Forum

I am partly surprised this is not an official thread yet.

Joseph, can you highlight where this project is at (or copy and paste if you have mentioned that already somewhere else)? Maybe provide some background info for those reading this thread who have never heard of the "Beautifully Promiscuous and Tasty Tomato Project"? Where do you see it already heading and where do you hope it will go?

For those interested Joseph did a wonderful podcast about it here:
https://www.foodgardenlife.com/show/2020/11/26/promiscuous-tomato-breeding

I got a last minute seed order from the experimental farm network.

Among the seeds i got were:
BH-series Panamourous Tomato
Q-series Panamorous Tomato
Neandermato
Brad Tomato
Jagodka Tomato
Exserted Orange Tomato

"Wildling Panamorous Tomato" was sold out. Is this line interesting and worth coveting?

Actually, what are the best lines from what I ordered? Where are the mango and pineapple tasting fruits I keep hearing about?  ;) Or are those lines too precious to give out yet? If so, which lines am I most likely to find something useful and edible? Which lines have the most exciting genetics or genetic combinations? I'm thinking the BH derived lines.

Q Series sounds like what you would be liable to find my favorite sorts from 2020 in. Oranges and bicolors... sounds a little like a mix of all the 2020 elites I grew.

Exserted Orange is my portion of Malcolms 2017 cross with Big Hill. Joseph grew it in 2018 and sent me seed for 2019. The 2019 grow out I did produced one plant with really lovely exsertion. So I grew out its seed in 2020 in isolation and repledged my portion of the population to OSSI or at least submitted such a pledge. Have a 2021 order for an oz of it so am growing again. I plan to reselect it. 2020 might contain some bicolor variation either from segregating or backcrossing to Big Hill and I didn't check every plant for exsertion as carefully as exserted Tiger (which got culled carefully in 2020). In many ways it is very similar to the A1/A2 lines which I think correspond to the Q series. I don't really think it's obligate outcrossing but did not check carefully. This year I'll try to cull it harder and check a few things.

BH sounds like XL. I couldn't help but plant a little clump of XL again from the one with the first ripe fruit last year. That particular tomato tasted great for a red. Would not be surprised if some bicolors segregated out of this but nome did for me last year. Also not completely convinced that there isn't some obligate outcrossing in this line. I thought the earliest was an obligate outcrossers based on blossom drop. However the consistent red color made me wonder if they were selfing generally.

Neandermato is Joseph's habrochaites population maybe with a little backcrossing added. I'm growing three plants of the same back cross line as last year. Grew them adjacent to LA2329 habrochaites crossing is possible. Not sure what my 2021 intent with them is if anything. Might put them with the XL and a few plants of A1/A2 G2 (probably pretty equivelant to Q series). Also an odd cracking bicolor that showed up in 2019. It was the worst tomato. Cracking, sprawling on the ground. Planted a few seeds though because uh it also might have been an underrated for 2019 interspecies hybrid with Big Hill ancestry.

I am growing Brad and two strains of Jagodka again but not sure why. Plenty of their genetics in crossed lines. Including Big Hill, the promiscuous lines, and Chariot both of which I am growing again. Maybe just to save a smidgeon of seed from to refresh my stock.

I think R18 and S35,36,37 are selections from something similar to A1/A2 (similar to Q series)? All yellow sorts.

One thing I wonder about is all the seed I saved from not isolated Big Hill in 2018 and 2019. There might be some interspecies hybrids in there.

I inherited a bulk bag of "compost" my wife rejected cause it is sort of a local ranchers quarantine gardening cash in project and honestly it's just ranch manure with weed seed in it. After helping her spread her replacement compost I spread it today in two lines. Going to put sand on that and then the 0.3 oz of bicolor and orange seed from this project will be my 2021 direct seeded rows hopefully tomorrow. I think it will work because I direct seeded the seed from the green wild type Big Hill x W4 seed I grew in 2019 in 2020 and it did great save for not producing any elites. Not sure about the quantity though. If it doesn't do both rows maybe I'll seed  some of that 2018 and 2019 Big Hill seed.

Here is the most up-to-date and accurate pedigree. Each line/dot represents between 1 to 20 plants. Therefore, the pedigree is greatly simplified.

Simultaneously, I'm doing a parallel back-crossing project. I figure that back-crossing may do a better job of maintaining an intact self-incompatible system.

Q-series were tasty, super-early, and dwarf/determinate, with red or orange fruits. The flavor of the orange fruits is highly preferred by the taste panels, and gets described as fruity/melon. Early flowers dropped without setting fruit, but that doesn't mean that they are self-incompatible. We didn't test. They most closely resemble Jagodka, one of the domestic ancestors to Big Hill. I am only replanting the orange-fruited plants.

A1/A2 were saladette/yellow-fruited siblings to the ancestor of BH series.

BH series is an anomaly to me. It has huge petals, and a highly exposed stigma. If nothing else, I call it panamorous. It didn't set fruit when grown in my bedroom window overwinter. Outdoors, it doesn't segregate as much as I would expect if it were self-incompatible. It is a large beefsteak (the most anomalous trait). It is red-fruited, therefore, I'm not continuing work on it. There is a fair amount of pink, or bi-color fruits showing up. One of the offspring last fall had green-gel around the seeds, which is very flavorful. Another grower is working on that line. In previous generations, I called this line C/3-1, C31, or BH-XL.

Wildling is everything else from the current generation. Fruits are saladette sized, yellow, pink, red, or orange. This is the most genetically diverse seed that I have. Plant phenotypes and flavors are highly diverse. I am replanting seeds only from yellow and orange fruited plants with highly exerted stigmas, huge petals, and that acted self-incompatible early in the season.

Neandermato is my grex of Solanum habrochaites accessions. It may also include back crosses to domestic tomatoes (including the pennellii lines). Once in a while I find leaves/stems that have a slight domestic look about them, and some of the fruits contain 3 locules instead of the typical 2. I think that's a domestic influence as well.  I haven't found a non-green fruit in the population. Sometimes I stare a long time at a fruit, thinking that it has a yellow blush.

Brad and Jagodka are fully domestic. They are tied for the earliest tomatoes that I grow. Both are ancestors to the Beautifully Promiscuous and Tasty Tomato Project.

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2021-04-23, 09:42:37 PMActually, what are the best lines from what I ordered? Where are the mango and pineapple tasting fruits I keep hearing about?  ;) Or are those lines too precious to give out yet? If so, which lines am I most likely to find something useful and edible? Which lines have the most exciting genetics or genetic combinations? I'm thinking the BH derived lines.

Q-series, Wildling, BH-series, A1/A2, and Exserted Orange are all derived from Big Hill. Basically, at this point, all of the publicly released seed is descended from Big Hill.

Q-series is a subset of Wildling.
R18 is a highly promiscuous plant selected from Wildling
S35,36,37 were highly promiscuous, and highly favored by the taste panel. Again, selected from the Wildling.

The 2018/19 Winter cross population were labeled W followed by a number. I didn't plant any of that seed this year. I think William might have, and I may yet plant a few plants from a yellow fruited plant that I grew last year. W# were pollen parents to Big Hill (BH X W4). W# were also crossed with each other, but that part of the project languished cause seed came back so late in the season. I may plant a yellow fruited selection from  W2 X W4. It is a 3 species hybrid.

Q-series is the safest variety. Most likely to be useful and edible. Seems like they may be selfing, or somewhat panamorous. They grew close together, so if they crossed, it was most likely to other Q plants. The flavor of the oranges is melon-like. The reds are tomato-like. If the end product of this project was orange fruited, melon tasting, on early determinate plants, with exposed stigmas, I'd feel really content. 

Q-series, and wildling were grown in isolation from wild varieties. Getting close to stabilizing for non-green fruits. (There was one green fruited plant in a patch of 108 plants last year.)

Why Q? When I started breeding tomatoes, I numbered the rows A, B, C, D.... I'm not repeating row numbers so that each plant can have an identifier that is unique across all time.... (In theory... There were duplicates of A, B, and C. Ooops!!!) Big Hill was originally the 9th plant in the H row, which was a row of about 32 siblings of the F2 of Hillbilly X Jagodka. Therefore, it's original name was HX9.

I keep chasing the exotic flavors, which are in the wildling line in the orange, yellow, pink, bicolor, and white fruits. Wildling also has the citrus, acidic, and tomato-like flavors. I'm not a fan. Wildling is by far the most genetically diverse.

This summer, I hope to work on increasing the diversity of Neandermato. It would be clever to make some manual crosses.

I have seriously reduced the number of fields that I farm, which hampers my isolation options. I'm paying close attention to keep the wilds separate from the elites.

Quote from: Joseph Lofthouse on 2021-04-23, 11:56:37 PM

The 2018/19 Winter cross population were labeled W followed by a number. I didn't plant any of that seed this year. I think William might have, and I may yet plant a few plants from a yellow fruited plant that I grew last year. W# were pollen parents to Big Hill (BH X W4). W# were also crossed with each other, but that part of the project languished cause seed came back so late in the season. I may plant a yellow fruited selection from  W2 X W4. It is a 3 species hybrid.

I am not sure if I have. My biggest 2021 concentration is on the bicolors I pulled out of the C31 x  A1/A2 3 species BH x W F3 winter 2019/2020 2020 growout. I have multiple trays of seedlings of the bicolors and will be direct seeding the more.diverse bicolor/orange seed mix tomorrow.

Then I have the new to me R18 and S35,36,37.

Then a little XL

Then a weirdly elite cracking bicolor thing from 2019 but from 2018 seed not 2018/19 winter seed. Don't remember what it was supposed to be.

The BHXW4 winter 2018/19 seed I got and grew in 2019 produced 13 wild type plants. I saved every scrap of seed they produced and planted it all in 2020. Both as seedlings and by direct seeding. I don't think I saved a single seed. I started to a couple times, but none were elite by 2020 standards. They may have pollinated back cross hab lines from Joseph or LA2329. They may have also pollinated some domestics but I am uncertain if there was any seed saved from a domestic with good exsertion. I rather hope they do not volunteer as I want to grow bicolor elites in that field this year. Thus the compost and sand layer underneath this year's direct seeding- try to eliminate some volunteering.

Of the seeds I bought Wildling and Q-Series are of the most interest to me. I have found that I don't really care for red tomatoes - orange, cream / white appear to be my favorites, still don't care for many though. And then there are the fruity flavors which are also nice.

BH-series took about a week longer than the others to germinate. I planted a later batch as well, BH-series is still taking its time.

I will probably be able people around me who enjoy red tomatoes taste things from the BH group. Maybe I can get other people interested in this project, people could select from what they like and make their own lines, intermixing them every so often.

I will still be tasting everything regardless of fruit color - undertones might still stand out enough to warrant keeping them.


I was hoping to get LA1777 at some point - Neandermato seems better though considering it is a grex, better flowers, cold hardiness.


In terms of exciting genetics or genetic combinations, I would say wildling is the most interesting. It doesn't have large fruits like BH, but I am assuming it will have a lot of diversity in terms of flavor, fruit size / color - among other traits. Whatever Joseph is currently selecting out of it will probably taste decent enough to me - I don't care for red - acidic tomatoes. Should be fun to experiment a bit with it on my own.

This year's seed has mostly germinated for this project. Arrival of the greenhouse has been delayed 2-3 weeks. Yikes!!!! I get to figure that out in the next few days.

I planted all the remaining seed from my original accession of Solanum pennellii. Maybe this time around, I have enough experience with it to give it better growing conditions.

I planted a large population of back-crosses with habrochaites cytoplasm. Feeling serious about selecting for more elite traits.

I planted a large population of Neandermato, and all of my remaining seed from the original accessions. Wanting to keep the diversity high. Adding in William's arthropod resistant variety.

Q4 and Q12 germinated in high numbers. They were the most elite of the Q-series. Orange fruited. Exserted stigmas. Saladette. Determinate. Tasty!

S35/36/37 didn't germinate well. Sigh.

Many of the overwintering clones are still alive. They were the most promiscuous-looking in the Idaho field.

I planted a purely domestic line: potato-leaved and yellow fruited. It is a segregate from Chariot [Brad X Yellow pear]. Seems like it would be a perfect parent for bee-assisted, or free-lance pollination, because crosses can be identified as soon as the first set of true-leaves emerge. And it's not red. I'm calling the population "Yellow Brad".

The entire project has the potential for large fruits, because Big Hill was a beefsteak, and all publicly released seed is descended from Big Hill.

The primary supporter of the project values saladette sized fruits, therefore, I'm steering my selection in that direction.

I'm growing out a few plants of a yellow selection of chariot. Similar to "yellow Brad". I think I spotted a potato leaf segregate too if memory serves mostly regular leaf as well. I've been taking forever and a day to grow out my original envelope of Chariot so growing a few of those too. Would really like to have a nicely exserted yellow potato leaf just for a breeding tool. Might be able to get there in a couple years.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-04-24, 12:08:27 PMWould really like to have a nicely exserted yellow potato leaf just for a breeding tool. Might be able to get there in a couple years.

I agree. I'll intend to add that to my breeding goals.

There were four potato leaves in the yellow chariot pot. I just pulled out the others.

Would it be wrong to name a tomato "exserted yellow potato leaf breeding tool"?

Quote from: Joseph Lofthouse on 2021-04-24, 11:02:10 AM

I planted all the remaining seed from my original accession of Solanum pennellii. Maybe this time around, I have enough experience with it to give it better growing conditions.

What soil are you using for the pure S. pennellii? I found 2 packets of pennellii I got from tgrc that I forgot I requested. I'm thinking cactus potting soil might work well since it is somewhat sandy and drains well.

It is amazing for my indoor plants like my indoor bananna and raspberry cutting. I will never go back to non cactus soil for indoor plants.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-04-24, 01:38:26 PM
There were four potato leaves in the yellow chariot pot. I just pulled out the others.

Would it be wrong to name a tomato "exserted yellow potato leaf breeding tool"?

At least in my own records, I often name things based on phenotype.

What if it were called "potato-leaved exserted yellow breeding tool"? Then we could shorten it to Pleybt.

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2021-04-24, 01:53:22 PMWhat soil are you using for the pure S. pennellii? I found 2 packets of pennellii I got from tgrc that I forgot I requested.

When I did trials to choose a potting mix for pure pennellii, the most successful was a compost with a high silt content. I have stayed with that since, reusing the same compost year after year. I'll probably run out of that mix this year. Intending to substitute a batch of 5 year old compost, and add garden soil to it for silt.

It seems to me like regular misting of the plants is very helpful to their growth.

I've been rooting pure pennellii cuttings this winter, by putting glass jars over them to maintain high humidity. They send out lots of roots from the stem.

What size is saladette size?

bigger than a cherry, smaller than a standard slicer.

Quote from: reed on 2021-04-24, 02:48:19 PM
What size is saladette size?

About 2 ounces.
Around 1.5" in diameter.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-04-23, 10:34:10 PM
One thing I wonder about is all the seed I saved from not isolated Big Hill in 2018 and 2019. There might be some interspecies hybrids in there.

I inherited a bulk bag of "compost" my wife rejected cause it is sort of a local ranchers quarantine gardening cash in project and honestly it's just ranch manure with weed seed in it. After helping her spread her replacement compost I spread it today in two lines. Going to put sand on that and then the 0.3 oz of bicolor and orange seed from this project will be my 2021 direct seeded rows hopefully tomorrow. I think it will work because I direct seeded the seed from the green wild type Big Hill x W4 seed I grew in 2019 in 2020 and it did great save for not producing any elites. Not sure about the quantity though. If it doesn't do both rows maybe I'll seed  some of that 2018 and 2019 Big Hill seed.

So I ran out of oomph after I got 80 feet covered in sand and seeded 4x. Another 70 foot row has compost may get it finished tomorrow or even next weekend. Plenty of seed in 0.3 oz for 160 feet of row. So probably won't be dipping into that 2018 and 2019 Big Hill seed. If I recall correctly 2019 Big Hill plants were right next to habrochaites and penellii hybrids.

I sowed 25 seeds each of Q-series Panamorous and  Wildling Panamorous on April 24 and on April 28 I have 6 Wildling seedlings and 9 Qs.

In a warm spot inside, but that's where I sow all my tomatoes, and I have never had such quick germination before.

Got the second 80 foot row seeded.

LA2329 Solanum habrochaites grow out. Plan to grow them out in these big pots so I can bring them in in the fall. Bigger pots then TGRC uses but I tried to stick to their 3 per gallon rule for habrochaites (if I remembered it right).

I direct seeded about an ounce of Wildling tomato seed today, into 12 row-feet. The flea beetles are likely to eat 99.9% of them. Maybe a few will survive. The Q series seed that I planted about 3 weeks ago germinated. The beetles are devouring the plants. And the weeds are awesome. I might intend to weed next week, and look more closely.

I also direct seeded S. peruvianum in the same field. (And eggplant, peppers, tobacco, and okra).

Direct seeding of everything is seeming more important to me. The direct seeded tomatillos are doing fine. They have been feral weeds here for about 20 years, so that's to be expected.

I weeded close around all the promiscuous project transplants today in the promiscuous project block. Lost a few to frost and rodents but not too bad. Probably around 70 or more individuals edit: actually around 115.

The new experiment with direct seeding in sand over manure compost just has bad germination and maybe a few seedling predators such as flea beetles and one Colorado potato beetle. May only be a dozen or so plants and concentrated in certain areas.

The two rows I direct seeded in the area that grew corn in 2020 has normal though sand amended soil and I have better germination there. Lots of weeding to do. Should be a pretty dense population.

I still have ~5 plants in the greenhouse because they were or are still small.

Four plants are surviving of eight I planted with the LA2329 in a different garden after a rodent attack.

Then the XL red is in yet another garden. It is resprouting well after frost and several survived with top growth intact. Not sure exactly how many they are but five or more.

Also I added the last bit of promiscuous orange and bicolor seed to some non-isolated Big Hill and Exserted Tiger I mixed. Then at the very end I dumped the seed in about three feet. That three feet is some very dense tomato seedlings. Probably did around 200 row feet of that mix. Will be interesting to see if anything intriguing shows up. Like a high percentage hab hybrid or strange large red tomatoes. Or yellow tomatoes with a blue blush.

 119 surviving transplant plants in the promiscuous block with 64 of those inside the new fence. Including 4 new transplants but not including the direct seeded seedlings.

I planted out the lines with habrochaites cytoplasm today. I put them into an isolated garden, so that they won't pollinate the elite lines. I put anything with habrochaites cytoplasm into the same field: The rest of the original accessions, The back crosses, And the smallest of the Brad-F2 seeds. One of the smallest-F2 looks for all the world like Solanum habrochaites. Perhaps an observable xenia effect. The one plant out-competed the rest of the plants in the pot, but I planted them all out anyway, perhaps some of the others will start growing in the garden. 

I also planted out an isolated patch of S pennellii. I have one more patch of S pennellii to plant out in the next few days.

The most vigorous plants this year are descended from a 3 species hybrid [[lycopersicon x pennellii] x habrochaites].

Flirting with frost in 36 hours. Go figure....

Low of 38F here expected Thursday night.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-06-09, 10:45:01 PM
Low of 38F here expected Thursday night.

36 F out on the land tonight. Liable to be colder from recent experience. My wife is out there now releasing an insect she bought to eat mites. She promised to put buckets on the R18. I have the little guy who has been missing me.

286 direct seeded seedlings only 91 of those in the compost sand rows. Distribution bad on sand compost rows normally even in the rows that were corn on 2020. No frost but weather.gov said 34 F

Got 80 feet of promiscuous row weeded. Probably the best of the four rows.  No annual nightshade and good germination. The annual nightshade in the other good germination row is making it hard to see seedlings.

Found first plant to save seed from based on flower structure. Guessing around 5 or 10 plants blooming so far.

Also did not take a picture, but on a lot of plants the very first flower seems to be forming as an extra big messy beefsteak type. Which makes perfect sense with Big Hill as the highest percentage domestic ancestor.

I think this was my favorite flower today. A first flower of a R18 G2

Same William

I wrote the word "exserted" on the marker flag of about 5 of the 119 or so transplants in my promiscuous isolation block.

Guessing that is around 10% of those actually blooming. Disinclined to remove the failures as they may be otherwise interesting and or informative.

If at some date I realize that obligate outcrossing has failed with this population I think I would isolate the rare extreme exserted individuals. In some ways the rarity of extreme exsertion may be evidence towards outcrossing. For example, I learned working with unisolated Blue Ambrosia that I needed to continually select for extreme exsertion. Last year most plants in the population had at least minimal exsertion. I did not select for it. I suspect that R18 has a higher rate just as extreme forms of Blue Ambrosia did.

Could also be that exsertion rates will increase with later flowering plants and or July temperatures.

I'm hesitant to select too harshly for exsertion alone if this population has obligate outcrossing. There are a few potato leaf individuals whose seedlings may confirm a outcrossing rate. I would say 100% PL = no outcrossing, 1-3% RL = moderate exsertion, 30% RL = highly exserted, and 70 to 100% RL = strong evidence for obligate outcrossing. Not sure what I would make of 40% to 60% RL. That would be really good but what would it mean? I could interpret that multiple ways.

Inserted individuals will also be interesting to observe for signs of infertility.

Layer cake flower. First bud. Second bud convinced me to write exserted on the flag but this flower is just a triumph of fusion. I think it goes involucral bracts In The center, then petals, then a green stigma tube, then anther tube, then petals, then involucral bracts again.

Well about four of six promiscuous project bicolors I planted with the LA2329 Habrochaites have flowered. The first of these I looked at has very good exsertion and is thus ideal for seed saving with hope of crossing. The other four not quite as good. The Solanum habrochaites itself I suspect maybe next weekend it will be blooming.

Also Bombus are visiting R18

Found some small insects on some Peruvianum flowers. They have been climbing all over them. Buzz pollination would probably be best for these flowers, bumblebees will probably still visit them anyway.

Haven't found them on other species yet.

My last surviving potato leaf direct seeded is blooming and is exserted. With that combination of traits I suspect it belongs to the promiscuous project despite it being in the mixed planting. Should be fun to find out its outcrossing rate.

My favorite this year so far is the R18 line Joseph sent me from the 2020 Idaho grow out. I have five plants marked eith double flags and four of those have tomatoes set. None ripe yet though.

Another favorite is in my crossing block with LA2329 but so far no seeds. I had a similar plant but it got bad blossom end rot. It has open flowers and odd fruit set behavior.

Awesome pics... you could grow those for the flowers alone! :)   The small insects might be sweat bees (halictid bees).  Carolyn M. used to say those were important pollinators for tomatoes, and visited more than bumblebees.
Bumblebees are really thorough with the tomatoes here. No flower too small, as long as it opened today.   I would expect to find a lot of crosses, just due to the level of pollinator attention.

So this year I have a lot of promiscuous project plants from bicolor plants of 2020 whose flowers don't quite meet my standards for exsertion of the stigma. I collected a mixed bag of the earlies from them to save some seed from. There are reds and pinks mixed in there. The red and pink row last year was XL. I didn't mix the seed. Therefore XL was a pollen parent. Intrigued.

Got about two seeds out of the first hand full of R18. They cracked because of watering for nearby squash.

Also got first fruits from a pink descendent of a bicolor probably XL line was father. Seems fairly common. This one though was a rare exserted stigma plant amongst the transplants.

Really liking R18 a accession Joseph selected in 2020. It seems to have the extra big flowers and exsertion desired, it fruited late with early abortion. So far only 2 seeds because of a lot of empties but I've accumulated another big pile of them to cut up. Empties have plagued me this year maybe from the July heat.

Lots of red and pink tomatoes this year in the promiscuous isolation garden. Good evidence for a high out crossing rate with the XL row as I only replanted seeds from bicolors and orange tomatoes. Except for a few XL plants in a different isolation garden. However most are not exserted this year and I am highly selecting for the few that are (so far).

I could use flavor testers to see if any of the many others have exceptional flavor. Some of them sure look lovely. I found one with great flavor I think of it as "little tiny pumpkins" doesnt taste like pumpkins though just fruity orange goodness but so far they are seed free! 

Picked the first two fruits of the promiscuous tomato plant I am most excited about in the LA2329 crossing block. It has the best exsertion and late fruit set indicative of possible good promiscuity. Even if not it may have a good mechanical crossing rate. They need to ripen more before I extract seed though. Also picked more fruits off the Big Hill and exserted tiger tomatoes in the block. They may just cross with each other but still worth a try.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-09-03, 01:58:56 PM
Picked the first two fruits of the promiscuous tomato plant I am most excited about in the LA2329 crossing block. It has the best exsertion and late fruit set indicative of possible good promiscuity. Even if not it may have a good mechanical crossing rate. They need to ripen more before I extract seed though. Also picked more fruits off the Big Hill and exserted tiger tomatoes in the block. They may just cross with each other but still worth a try.

They are stripey and delightful. Now have picked four of eight on the plant.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-09-06, 11:22:08 AM
They are stripey and delightful. Now have picked four of eight on the plant.

Any fun flavors?

Quote from: Garrett Schantz on 2021-09-06, 04:14:07 PM
Any fun flavors?

Not ripe enough to taste yet. I have one plant with tiny orange and so far seedless but very fruity flavored pumpkin shaped fruits. I'm not much of a systematic taster. This year I've narrowed the plants I'm saving seed from way down just based on exsertion.

Quote from: Garrett Schantz on 2021-09-06, 04:14:07 PM
Any fun flavors?

It tasted ok but not awesome. There were some off flavors. It was yellow inside. Mostly just kind of a light yellow flavor. Really good aftertaste. Got a lot of seed from the six tomatoes. Some variation in seed size visible in the gel. So not such a perfect tomato that I regret planting it with the LA 2329. Also given some large seeds I suspect at least that it wasn't 100% pollinated by LA2329 but then bee behavior wouldn't support it. Is it obligate outcrossing? Hard to say.

Now at the other end of the same crossing block there is a tomato plant from the promiscuous project with only one fruit and I uh picked it today still pretty green but I tested the stem and it broke really easily. It also has changed from pale dull green to darker rich green so seeds are likely to be viable. The plant is blooming prolifically at the moment but has not set any more fruit. The stigma is almost to the end of the anther cone. I think it's behaving in an obligate outcrossing fashion and the low pollination rate supports that given the architecture of the flower. Cautiously intrigued by the experiment in general.

Just extracted seed from a sort of bicolor-ish plant. It gets that red spot in the center of the fruit when the outside is still green. Then the flesh goes through yellow and salmon? Phases. The taste is acceptable no off flavors but also nothing super exciting. Just tastes like a tomato.  I flagged it for exsertion amongst very few. I don't think it has obligate out crossing. It has produced a lot of seed though compared to the rest of my exserted selections..

I'm not sure but I suspect I'll end up direct seeding this seed next year.

Found it. Exserted, open, flower. possibility of S34-35-36?? Possibility of obligate out crossing. Reviews are "is that a tomato?" and "persimmon".

Quote from: William S. on 2021-09-13, 07:50:59 PM
Found it. Exserted, open, flower. possibility of S34-35-36?? Possibility of obligate out crossing. Reviews are "is that a tomato?" and "persimmon".

That sounds quite nice! I don't really care much for regular tomatoes, new / different flavors seem interesting.

Is "persimmon" related to taste ? If so, wow ! :)
(well, not if related to its astringency )

Quote from: Nicollas on 2021-09-13, 11:04:26 PM
Is "persimmon" related to taste ? If so, wow ! :)
(well, not if related to its astringency )

We bought a box of Fuyu which you eat hard once at costco. I don't remember it as astringent. I haven't eaten many persimmon. It was my wife's word. This was not astringent. It was ultra sweet and tropical fruity. No off flavors. No astringency. Aftertaste was really good.

Awesome color!   :)  Wonder if it's Beta or tangerine.

Quote from: Steph S on 2021-09-14, 04:22:14 AM
Awesome color!   :)  Wonder if it's Beta or tangerine.

This color variant shows up in Exserted orange too. It is bicolor from big hill but the yellow turns orange from something from the wild ancestry.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-09-14, 04:21:06 AM
We bought a box of Fuyu which you eat hard once at costco. I don't remember it as astringent. I haven't eaten many persimmon. It was my wife's word. This was not astringent. It was ultra sweet and tropical fruity. No off flavors. No astringency. Aftertaste was really good.

Thats a winner, congrats  :)

(Fuyu is PCNA so non astrigent, some cultivars are PCA and can be astringent if not fully ripe. Its quite an experience whrn you bite into an unripe PCA persimmon for the first time !)

Tropical fruity is definitely on my list of tomato taste winners.

I checked imy fermentation and no gel sacks after just one day so just rinsed the seeds. Over 100 seeds from the new favorite tropical fruit tomato. Maybe it will be the larger portion of my promiscuous project transplants next year.

Most of my Wildlings died - this plant had an interesting fruit.

The striping on one side is interesting. The biggest downside with this fruit was collecting the seeds.

The seed cavities were encased with flesh on the outside, pockets here and there. Had to use a knife and find them all - this fruit was underripe, so I wanted as many seeds as possible.

Skin was quite thick on this fruit. Lot of flesh as well, hardly any gel.

Hopefully these germinate well next year. I want to see if the odd striping reappears.

I'd say that striping is fairly common in the project at large. It is fun.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-09-14, 09:39:31 PM
I'd say that striping is fairly common in the project at large. It is fun.

Yeah, I have been seeing a lot of weird traits. Some of them are pretty cool looking. Lot of fun stuff.

Only half of the fruit had striping, that half also didn't show any green shoulders like the normal half.

Some of my Wild Crosses will be in their F3 stage next growing season. Should be fun.

How much inbreeding do we collectively reckon the project can handle?

If my 2021 tasty elite gave me 100 viable seeds. Assuming it is indeed promiscuous and I isolate those 100 resulting plants in one of my six isolation gardens. Will I have massive 2022 reproductive problems with a sibling garden?

Never seems to be an issue for tomatillos.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-09-16, 06:57:47 AM
How much inbreeding do we collectively reckon the project can handle?

If my 2021 tasty elite gave me 100 viable seeds. Assuming it is indeed promiscuous and I isolate those 100 resulting plants in one of my six isolation gardens. Will I have massive 2022 reproductive problems with a sibling garden?

Never seems to be an issue for tomatillos.

There are about 35 wild s-alleles.  I'm assuming that we have at least 5 in the promiscuous project. 1 from the domestic ancestors, and 2 each from habrochaites and pennellii. Potentially many more, because the first few years, I grew S habrochaites adjacent to the promiscuous lines. It slowed down the selection for elite lines, but helped with diversity.

It only takes 3 s-alleles to maintain a viable population. Whichever s alleles are rarest have the highest reproductive advantage.

The only time I have heard of tomatillos failing to set fruit was when only one plant was grown.

Reporting on the greenhouse grown tomatoes.

Today, I collected fruits from attempted manual pollinations using huge self-incompatible flowers to pollinate Sun Sugar and Solanum pimpinellifolium. Here's what the flowers of the pollen donors looked like.

Attempted manual pollinations on galapagense and cheesmanae didn't set fruits. They mostly didn't set fruits from selfing either. I didn't buzz or shake the flowers.  Solanum pimpinellifolium in the greenhouse set lots of selfed fruits.

Fruits are just starting to ripen for pollinations using the huge flowers as pollen donors to each other.

The tomatoes really thrived in the greenhouse. No pollinators though, so the only fruits that set on the self-incompatible lines were from the manual pollinations that I attempted.

The plants grew huge and etiolated in the greenhouse compared to outside in the open field.

I think I managed to pick two more tomatoes off the really tasty plant tonight. Left two on it. They may yet ripen if they don't get frosted. Should up my seed count a little. Wish I had watered the plant a bit more a few months ago, it would be much bigger.

Also grabbed some more R18, the last batch was the best yet. So I may yet get plenty of seed for it. It has the best flowers and there are six plants and the fruits vary a bit. Some are russetted. Though the flowers are similar. Like the ones Joseph just shared photos of. Huge flowers.

Quote from: William S. on 2021-09-16, 09:43:46 PMAlso grabbed some more R18, the last batch was the best yet. So I may yet get plenty of seed for it. It has the best flowers and there are six plants and the fruits vary a bit. Some are russetted. Though the flowers are similar. Like the ones Joseph just shared photos of. Huge flowers.

The bottom flower in my recent post is the original R-18: Cloned in the fall of 2020. I successfully cloned it again this fall. Perhaps it will survive another winter.

Quote from: Joseph Lofthouse on 2021-09-16, 10:45:12 PM
The bottom flower in my recent post is the original R-18: Cloned in the fall of 2020. I successfully cloned it again this fall. Perhaps it will survive another winter.

That's good, it makes nice babies.

Here are some accessions that could be interesting for those who are able to request from TGRC :

  * LA0812 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA0812) (L. esculentum) - The only SI esculentum of the collection (if it is not a mistake, it is from a cross with LA0716 which is Facultative-SC ...)
  * LA3243 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA3243) (L. esculentum) - exserted stigmas and fasciated flowers
  * LA4078 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA4078) (L. esculentum) - naturally outcrossing
  * LA4040 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA4040)  (L. esculentum) - exserted stigmas
  * LA4039 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=%20LA4039) (L. esculentum) - exserted stigmas
  * LA3859 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA3859)  (L. pimpinellifolium) - large flowers + exserted stigmas
  * LA1381 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA1381)  (L. pimpinellifolium) - large flowers + exserted stigmas
  * LA4673 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA4673)  (L. pimpinellifolium) - very large flowers + exserted stigmas
  * LA2556 (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/AccDetail.aspx?AccessionNum=LA2556)  (L. hirsutum.) - large flowers + exserted stigmas + LB resistance

My internet seems to be too slow at the moment to click on any of those. I don't have any of them in my collection. I checked my handy new inventory. I've been able to request accessions from TGRC through my company in recent years, though I am currently in the process of shutting one company down and starting another. Each accession I request though is sort of like a commitment to do years of work. So, I think it is important to really understand why I want an accession before requesting it. What does it add to a project or if it launches a new project how is that valuable to me and to our community of tomato breeders?

That said Andrew had an interesting idea of growing out some of the more interesting accessions and offering them through EFN or similar. Though that is also a lot of work!

TGRC seems to have access problems right now

Quote from: William S. on 2021-12-20, 12:43:26 PM
That said Andrew had an interesting idea of growing out some of the more interesting accessions and offering them through EFN or similar. Though that is also a lot of work!

YES PLEASE ! It's much more pricey and difficult to get seeds from TGRC out of the US for example

Hi guys,

This year I am growing 2 packs of Wildling panamorous and 1 pack of Q-series and some crosses I made last year with 2 Wildling plants that stood out from the rest.
My main goal with the Wildling plants this year is to produce seeds so I have more plants to select from in the future. Because they didn't do so well outside last year with the late blight, these will be grown in my greenhouse close together. Q- series will probably have to go outside.

Last year I found a late blight resistant plant in the Wildlings. I am growing seeds from this plant outside this year and from crosses I made with it.
The crosses are;
Wildling x tomatito de jalapa
Wildling x Matt's wild cherry
Wildling x ( Weight in Gold x Dwarf champion improved ) F2

The Wildling x ( Weight in Gold x Dwarf champion improved ) F2 cross will be selected for dwarf growth to hopefully create a late blight tolerant dwarf tomato.

Another cross I made last year was with a Wildling mother pollinated by Solanum pennellii and probably also Matt's wild cherry x pennellii.
The Wildling mother plant was a compact determinate plant with large promiscuous flowers and yellow fruit. The leafs were light green with a blue sheen and it didn't smell like regular tomato but more like a wild species. Unfortunately not resistant to late blight but because it was a very pretty plant I saved seeds. I will be growing some of them this year, maybe pollinate it with a  more disease resistant plant.


If you are interested in pictures , I created an instagram account for my tomato breedings. This is the linkhttps://www.instagram.com/tomatobreeding/ (https://www.instagram.com/tomatobreeding/)

Sounds pretty promising Arjan. Logical and interesting crosses. Blight resistance meets promiscuous.

I think a small garden bed in my backyard is going to be a crossing block for Late Blight Resistance this year. I have received from TGRC a habrochaites accession known for a multigenic resistance, a pimpinillifolium accession from ARS-Grin that might be the PH5 source, Iron Lady F1 or F2, Cloudy Day F1, Purple Zebra F1, and Galahad F1. Plan to add in an exserted potato leaf from the MMM project and maybe like say one plant of the fuyu persimmon flavored promiscuous project. Kind of just crowd them in a bed and hope for hybrids from the exserted sorts. A R18 might be a nice addition or maybe one F1 hybrid promiscuous x LA2329 or something.

Then the Fuyu persimmon flavor stabilization, if possible, project. Though also with that line if I have enough plants, I think I want to sacrifice one to each of the other crossing blocks. It is just too good of a flavor (if it comes back) not to spread and cross with. Alternatively, just make some controlled crosses with it!

Then year three of the Arthropod resistance project with LA2329 Habrochaites, hybrids, and LA1410 galapagagense. I need to get a cross with LA1410 going either by a deliberate cross pollination or a crossing block with my MMM project to try to get potato leaf plants with the improved stigma exsertion of Big Hill.

Another thought for a 2022 promiscuous project is to maybe take Big Hill, Exserted Tiger, Exserted Orange, Salmon colored bicolor promiscuous segregate with no off taste, and maybe like all the leftover seeds from MMS x BH F1 and F2 and make a little direct seeded exserted tomato grex. I might use some potentially crossed Big Hill seed from 2019 that says it could be crossed with Blue Ambrosia. I also have the seed saved from the exserted red potato leaf from my 2021 direct seeding, but I think I want to grow it out in a flat and find the regular leaf descendants than transplant them into a parallel row. Possible pollinators include Big Hill exserted orange, and promiscuous project direct seeded bicolor. Similarly, from my 2021 LA2329 crossing block I had one plant of each of Exserted Tiger, Big Hill, and MMS and any domestic hybrids resulting are between them and or promiscuous project plants (which did not taste good). So those domestic hybrids if detected which could be easy for MMS could go into a parallel row and be another good addition to a sort of Grex crossing block for the exserted types but with less likelihood of off flavored ones than direct seeding bulk promiscuous project seed.

Not sure what to do with XL Red and its likely descendants from 2020 bicolor plants. Some of them tasted great in 2020. Might just skip a year with them as so much to do with trying to stabilize the Fuyu persimmon tropical fruit flavored line.

My MMS x BH project which I am now thinking of as Mission Mountain Morning or MMM is more of a pre-breeding project to try to get a more useful open flower / exserted stigma into a potato leaf form bicolor with a blue blush, but I also want to cross it into the various other projects asap. It may also produce some usable F2 potato leaf segregates for various crossing blocks this year.

Well last year proved blight resitance is crucial here if I want to grow tomatoes outdoors.

QuoteThen the Fuyu persimmon flavor stabilization, if possible, project. Though also with that line if I have enough plants, I think I want to sacrifice one to each of the other crossing blocks. It is just too good of a flavor (if it comes back) not to spread and cross with. Alternatively, just make some controlled crosses with it!

I hope you can stabilize that taste, I want to find something similar in the Wildlings I'm growing, thats why I plan to make a lot of seeds to increase the chance to find something special.

I have very much grown an huge amount of Joseph Lofthouse's seed for essentially that same strategy you propose each year for the past five years. I have a tremendous amount built up. I felt like I was just working a step behind Joseph for years. Perhaps part of why I've started to diverge more and more with new side projects. I do think it is paying off though as since 2020 we have had tomatoes we can eat back from this and it has gotten really interesting. My top three selections in 2021 were very good tomatoes for eating.

My own tomato Mission Mountain Sunrise or MMS gave evidence of having very poor disease resistance last year for very common things like powdery mildew. In my main fields it does fine. On my parent's porch in Missoula it got powdery mildew pretty bad. I bet in a lot of your garden's it would curl up and die. Without selection pressure for disease resistance it is hard to breed for it. I am taking a step towards replacing MMS with its child a cross to Big Hill. Basically just a lot of prebreeding to get a good mother with some traits like potato leaves and exsertion that will make things easier to keep track of with crossing blocks in the future.

I will probably use the good flavored lines with interesting colors to back cross to interesting lines that don't have good flavor yet. Thus my interest in including one of the good flavored selections in each crossing block. Also I hope to learn from that if the Fuyu persimmon line is obligate outcrossing, mixed, or self compatible this year and actually iteratively in subsequent years.

It is a little daunting to look at my putative new crosses with LA2329 habrochaites and to think of the six or so generations and garden space needed going forward.

William and Joseph, (and others)

Can you give us a brief list of the lines / varieties that have the most interesting traits that one should give priority to?

Which lines have the interesting flavors?
Which lines have promiscuous flowers?
Which lines are your personal favorites?
Anything i missed?
How far along would you say this project actually is now at this point?

Hoping to get back into the swing of tomatoes this year especially this project. Made myself some make shift raised beds from some 17 gal. plastic bins to give myself extra planting space in case I need it for tomatoes.

Some of the new centerflors and multiflors from Peace Seeds / Peace Seedlings have wild tomato ancestry from Alan Kapuler's breeding. I might try to grow some of them as well.

"Can you give us a brief list of the lines / varieties that have the most interesting traits that one should give priority to?"
R18 - I think I sent you some seed
XL- I think I sent you some seed
Salmon Bicolor- I sent you some seed
The One Fuyu Persimmon (unshared)
Little Pumpkins (unshared)
F1 LA2329 hybrids (unshared)
Though anything from 2020-2021 is way ahead of 2019 and earlier basically the BH x W4 cross that I grew out a small portion of in 2019 produced some big tomatoes in Joseph's larger garden- I only got wild types. The one's Joseph found and shares seed from in 2020 and 2021 have been amazing! I sent you seed for some of these. I selected heavily in 2021 for exserted and open flowers. A lot of closed flowers were present in 2021 in my lines probably because my main selection in 2020 was for bicolors. The 2020 XL red patch pollinated some of the bicolors so the occasional XL red descendent was interspersed in 2021. In 2021 my intentional XL red patch was in a different tomato block. I sent you some seeds from 2020 and 2021 that are in this category, and you may find something amazing in there if you grow enough of them! 

"Which lines have the interesting flavors?"
Of what I shared with you:
XL - sometimes a clean tasting delicious red slicer
Salmon Bicolor- clean taste no off flavors in 2021

Of what I didn't have enough seed to share with you for 2022:
The One Fuyu Persimmon flavored tropical no off notes
Little Pumpkins similar no off notes (5 seeds)

I plan to grow these last two out in a larger field to seed increase and also hopefully find out how much flavor segregation they have in 2022. Taste testers needed.


"Which lines have promiscuous flowers?"

R18- almost perfect habrochaites type flowers with maybe some penellii in there. But so far tastes terrible. Fuyu Persimmon x R18 is a logical cross to make.

Semi promiscuous flowers:
Salmon colored bicolor
Big Hill (domestic)
Exserted Orange (domestic)
Exserted Tiger (domestic)
Fuyu persimmon flavored

"Which lines are your personal favorites?"
Promiscuous x LA2329
R18
Fuyu Persimmon flavored
Little Pumpkins (only five seeds)

"Anything I missed?"

There is a huge potential to make new crosses with wild tomato species between the promiscuous tomatoes x Wild and between domestic tomatoes x wild. Also, between wild x wild with the more palatable wild species like Solanum pimpinillifolium and Solanum cheesemanii.

"How far along would you say this project actually is now at this point?"
Flavor and flower trait stabilization on some lines. Also, though I am basically starting over and finding that the project is indeed conducive to subsequent crosses with Habrochaites and probably penellii in regard to my plan to cross in LA2329 which I currently think is working based on cotyledon characters of recent germinates.
I would say potentially as little as this growing season for decent flower stabilization on the Fuyu persimmon line, but it really depends on how much flavor varies and the outcrossing rate of the selected mother for flavor. Her flowers were open and exserted so I would imagine she crossed some even if she was capable of selfish selfing. Depending on how things go some lines could be at about the same point Exserted Orange and Exserted Tiger are now at the end of the growing season. If stabilizing Exserted Orange and Exserted Tiger is a guide very soon. I think Salmon Bicolor could probably be stabilized but rather than stabilize it I might create a grex with the other open and exserted flower palatable tomatoes.


"Some of the new centerflors and multiflors from Peace Seeds / Peace Seedlings have wild tomato ancestry from Alan Kapuler's breeding. I might try to grow some of them as well."

I personally would consider those in the mental category of someone else's longer season domestic tomatoes. Fun to try, but not deserving of much garden space. I found a cross with something anthocyanin in Golden Tressette when we were exploring that germplasm a couple years ago. Just came with the seeds. Segregated wonderfully. I plan to grow one plant /clump of each of the peace seeds / peace seedlings varieties I've acquired both in this year and past. Maybe add the blue segregating offspring of Golden Tressette to a direct seeded grex. My experience with Golden Tressette was that it has what I refer to as modest stigma exsertion. Also, I think it did cross in my garden with likely your line of pimpinillifolium I need to grow out the F2 and double check. I got Geranium Kiss and yellow centiflor hypertress to try this year in seed trades. Probably anything at least modestly exserted is a good choice for a cross mother.

I feel about the same way about J & L Gardens Lee Goodwin's fun additions except the strain of Blue Ambrosia I got from him still has some of the best stigma exsertion I have seen and what I bred for in Exserted Tiger. Though the most interesting are his wild cross results. I got Wild Gem and Copper Currant to try in 2022. His Wild Child did great for me in 2020. However, the one plant I had of Weight in Gold didn't set for me in 2020. Dwarf Hirsutum cross is an interesting tomato but not super interesting.

Here is a summary of the seed lots that I kept in 2021 from the Beautifully Promiscuous and Tasty Tomato Project.

Name	Fruit Type	Description
Best of S35	Orange 2"	Early. Highly productive. Determinate. Closed canopy. Flavor is very nice, but not exotic tropical fruit. My favorite, even though flavor and flower type don't match project goals. Seeds collected from only the best plant. This line would be a great candidate for grow out for inclusion in a seed catalog, or for a market gardener.
Q-Orange	Orange, 2"	Early. Highly productive. Acting self-compatible. Mostly determinate with closed canopy.
Q-4 Orange	Orange, 2"	Acting self-incompatible. Mostly indeterminate and wispy.
Brushy Orange	Orange, 2"	A line that I am growing to explore it's shrubbery-type growth habit. Good flavor.
Q-Series	Orange, red, 2"	Early, productive. Sent to Experimental Farm Network. It contains seed from S35, Q-Orange, Q-4 Orange, and Brushy Orange.
Wildling	Red, orange, yellow, white	Contains seeds from all of the above families, plus other families from the bulk planting. Mixed breeding system. The most genetically diverse line that I offer. Sent 1 ounce of seed to Experimental Farm Network.
SI Potato Leaf	Red 1"	Self-incompatible. Potato leaved. Tiny flowers. Some orange fruits. Two fruits tested at 15% brix.
SI Persimmon	Netted 1"	The most amazing flavor from this project! The netted skin looked particularly unappetizing. Self-incompatible. Barely survived to make fruit.
Direct Seeded	Red/Orange ~1"	10,000 seeds were direct seeded. About 7 matured fruit. Mostly acting self-incompatible. I would love to reliably direct seed tomatoes.
Wild Species
Solanum cheesmaniae	green/yellow 3/8"	Multi-generational selection for easy germination. Only produced seed because it was grown in greenhouse.
Solanum galapagense	Orange, 1/4"	Multi-generational selection for easy germination, and adaptation to local conditions. /td]
Solanum habrochaites	Green 1/2" to 3/4"	A multi-year grex of many different families. May include back crosses from the promiscuos tomato project. Also collected seeds separately from the largest fruits, and the largest seeds from the largest fruits. (Looking for naturally occurring back crosses.)
LA2329	Green fuzzy 1/2"	Particularly resistant to insects. Planted with the general Solanum habrochaites grex.
Solanum pennellii	Green 3/8"-3/4"	Multi-generational selection for being able to grow in our native soils, and for larger fruits.
Solanum peruvianum	White/purple 3/4"	Collected from Mendocino County, California. Resistant to blight and irrigation with ocean water. Lovely flavor.
Interspecies crosses
SI x SI	Yellow, orange, 1"-1.5"	Self incompatible plants, descended from interspecies hybrids, cloned in 2020. They were crossed among themselves this growing season. Their pollen was used to make new interspecies crosses.
Pimpinellifolium X SI	Red 3/8"	Made for the sake of being an interspecies hybrid with a species that isn't yet part of the project. It may add tolerance to damp conditions, since it's native range is more humid.
SunSugar X SI	Orange 3/4"	We suspect that SunSugar has Solanum habrochaites as a recent wild ancestor.
Brad X habrochaites	Yellow 3/4"	An F1 hybrid. From a natural cross that was identified by a Xenia effect in the seed. The most vigorous tomato plant that I ever grew. This is the same type of cross that originally started this project in 2016. These were pollinated by wild type Solanum habrochaites.
[Brad X habro] X SI	Yellow 3/4"	Pollinated by elite lines from the promiscuous tomato project.
R18 X SI	Yellow 1"	R18 produced the largest flowers that I have seen in tomato plants. Crossed it with other self-incompatible tomatoes with large flowers.
Habrochaites BC2021	green	This population presumably has some back crossing to domestic tomatoes, though I have yet to recover domestic-type fruits from it.
Bullet	White 3/4"	Bullet shaped fruits. I maintain this line, because of the high umami, and because it is a 3 species hybrid (lycopersicum, habrochaites, pennellii). The flavor is iffy and adventuresome. The archetypal "fermenty" flavor that the project has mostly eliminated. Very productive.

1st photo. Best of S35. 2021 grow-out.

2nd photo. Flower from R18, compared to a domestic flower.

Joseph's post reminds me that I didn't give a very complete accounting in my earlier post of what is in my seed stash related to this project. If I didn't mention it in my earlier post except for the last item which is some seed Joseph just sent me, it isn't very high priority for planting out in 2022. 

1   PLANTED Big Hill HX-9 LA2329 Crossing block 2021- substantial amount of seed-PLANTED
2   DS EXSERTED pl red any rl seedling a cross!!! 2021
3   XL? early promiscuous project red and pink (from bicolor) not exserted elites 2021
4   exserted promiscuous bicolor 2021
5   exserted promiscuous pink from bicolor elites 2021
6   exserted promiscuous salmon bicolor no off taste probably not true obligate 2021
7   PLANTED- Exserted tiger LA2329 crossing block 2021
8   F2 S. Pennelii x tomato hybrids original packet from Andrew
9   Fairy Hollow none like Archetype- wild regression 2019
10   PLANTED favorite promiscuous bicolor from LA2329 Crossing block- already hybrids with more planted
11   G2 Habrochaites cytoplasm lofthouse no elites 2020
12   XL G2 Promiscuous XL Dark Chocolate Red 2020
14   LA4488 F1 Growout one plant Penellii X, it was grown near pennellii X F3 three way, and purish pennellii
15   Little Pumpkins (Promiscuous project)
16   Mixed Wild tomatoes half wilds and 3/4 wilds including pennellii and peruvianum and habrochaites
17   PLANTED MMS from LA2329 crossing block
18   Mouse Eaten (Slight damage) promiscuous project elites 2020
19   Neandermato 2017 either selfed or crossed with other species
20   PLANTED open and exserted plant that had empty fruits till end of season in la2329 crossing block 2021- already hybrids with more just planted
21   Polyamorous tomatoes bulk original packet from Joseph
22   XL Promiscuous G2 Pink 2020
23   promiscuous not exserted la2329 crossing block
24   PLANTED-DUD- promiscuous plant slightly inserted only three fruits at end of season maybe 20-40 seeds but doesn't feel like much LA2329 crossing block
25   Promiscuous project direct seeded orangish bicolor slightly exserted ~35 seeds
27   R18 will be g3 2021 promiscuous project
28   S. hab pollinated by BH x W 2020
29   S. habrochaites 3 locules (BC1?) 2018 original packet
30   the one! Exserted open persimmon tropical 2021 (I plan a huge grow out in 2022 then distribution after)promiscuous project
31   Three way hybrid pennellii x habrochaites x domestic 0.07 oz 2019
32   Ugly Cracking very domestic possible F1 bicolor 2019- grew in 2021 and didn't save seed because produced an average bicolor but might very well be a wild cross descendent of Big Hill.
33   XL a small plant that kept its fruit off the ground promiscuous project 2021
34   XL red 2021 tomato from promiscuous project elites
35   XL Tomato 0.6 oz promiscuous project elite 2020
36   Promiscuous Panormous Direct Seeded Grown by Joseph Lofthouse in 2021 by direct seeding- intended for 2022 direct seeded increase

QuoteSolanum peruvianum
   White/purple 3/4"
   Collected from Mendocino County, California. Resistant to blight and irrigation with ocean water. Lovely flavor.

This one is interesting that it is irrigated with ocean water. Our nursery is a  couple hundred meters from the sea and the groundwater and the water in the canals here is very brackish. A tomato that could handle that water would be great. This is one of the reasons I was interested in working with Solanum pennellii because it is supposed to be salt tolerant.

S. pennellii, S. peruvianum, and S. galapagense are the three most interesting to me from the true wild. All supposedly should have good drought and / or salt tolerance.

The S. pennelli hybrids don't self pollinate very well either because of self incompatibility genes or chromosomes being being weird. I pollinated one with galapagense pollen once and got a large fruit developing but I lost it due to a mishap on my part. I'd like to do it again,  but i think I'm out of galapagense.

I would love a peruvianum x pennellii hybrid!

Thanks William and Joseph!

Some very interesting lines there!

I would love a tomato that has large flowers and tastes like a persimmon!!

I didn't send you any LA1410 back?

Quote from: William S. on 2022-03-15, 05:52:07 PM
I didn't send you any LA1410 back?

I don't think so. That's okay. Keep me in mind for next year!

I'm thinking of planting my tomatoes seeds inside today. I finally have a professional grow tent and have decent lighting that the overwintering peppers and Rubus bartonianus plants seem to like. Already have some tomato seedlings from my new favorite small dwarf domestic orange cherry tomato I found at the Sprouts supermarket last year.

Hopefully I'm not too far behind in starting my tomatoes this year. I get more organized each year. Don't think I have room for the domestic tomatoes or the habrochiates group, so I don't think I will grow them this year. Many others are working with habrochiates anyway.

These are the groups of seeds I think I will plant:

Semi - wild group which includes these subgroups:

Joseph's group: Q-series, R18, G2 pink, XL, promiscuous bicolors, etc.

Pennellii group

plentiflors & centiflors from Alan Kapuler

Galapagense group: S. galapagense, S. cheesmaniae, S. chmielewskii

S. sitiens & S. lycopersicoides

Big Hill group

LA1996 (AFT)

S. peruvianum group: S. peruvianum hybrids and random S. peruvinaum seeds.

Okay planted all the ones mentioned.  :o

Fingers crossed!

...I feel so behind on this project compared to the rest of you.  Oh, well.

I just planted from the promiscuous project segregates I liked best last year:

Little Pumpkins (half the seeds there were ~20) a little inserted produced empty but good tasting tropical fruity fruits until seeds formed at the end.

The One! Fuyu Persimmon flavored open and exserted acts obligate outcrossing (About 100 seeds)- just two crowded cells but these I will transplant.

Salmon Bicolor might be facultative / just open and exserted. Just a pinch. I may direct seed more of these this year with exserted orange, big hill, MMS x BH and exserted tiger.

Edit: and a pinch of R18 and the four seeds of The One! I planted earlier one of them is growing nicely. Which suggests 25% germination on the packet I took them from but these were from a larger packet.

Oh and also there is the whole crossing with the LA2329 project and I suspect I have a couple MMS X LA2329 but mostly it looks like it is Promiscuous x LA2329 because the Exserted Tiger flat and the Big Hill flat both look really not very promising for hybrids at least as cotyledons.

Also, Andrew one of the neat things about this project is we can always bring anyone up to date on it with a seed packet.

So I have one plant of The One, Fuyu Persimmon flavored that is much bigger and older because of a desire to use it in early crosses. It does have some tight buds formed yay.

The thing is it is looking quite a bit dwarf-ish. The mother was small, and we've talked sometime in the past about some possibilities about dwarfs arising from interspecies crosses. That may in fact be where Payette got its dwarf character from. Joseph has described some of his selections from the project as dwarf.

Comparison to a Dwarf Gloria's treat in photo below plants are similar in age. The genes may not be quite the same, but it does seem to have a lot of what a true rugose dwarf has. I.E., it may be a true rugose dwarf or something very close to it.

Is there any possibility of getting a rooted cutting of "the one" shipped? ;)

Do you think the flavor is stabilized? Will seedlings this year change in flavor?

Also, William,

What about a little pumpkin x persimmon cross?

P.s. I think there is a large orange beefsteak heirloom named persimmon already. So there is potential confusion there.

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2022-05-03, 10:34:39 AM
Is there any possibility of getting a rooted cutting of "the one" shipped? ;)

Do you think the flavor is stabilized? Will seedlings this year change in flavor?

Nothing to cut off yet! I wish I had dug up the original and brought it inside.

I hope to find out the answer to the flavor stabilization questions this year. My guess based on the flower structure of the mother is that selfing will be only part of the offspring. So I expect better average flavor but would be suprised if they all taste good.

I am also curious about the range of growth forms. Some of the seedlings seem really slow growing. Others faster to pretty normal but the oldest is definitely growing fairly slow and sturdily.

Little pumpkins had a similar flavor. Will see what it does this year. A cross would probably be a little boring but I am most interested in the first question for now. Stability?! Little pumpkins produced far less seed and had inserted stigmas. I don't know for sure if that has any advantage for stability. I thought I might keep them in the same block but I've also thought about putting the Little Pumpkins in with a wider diversity.

I wouldn't be suprised if it takes awhile given that we have deliberately bred for outcrossing. So more like breeding corn and less like breeding inbreeding tomatoes. Selection still works though. I think pulling three good ones out of hundreds this year I would be very pleased if 60% of these are good. If ten of them are that is still progress. Planting them in more places may help to understand the variation as well. My soils are a bit variable.

I would like to grow the "Persimmon" named tomato some time. Don't think it would do well here with the short growing season but I might get one good tomato. I am not actually calling mine exactly the same name- I don't actually think it is ready to be named or distributed to the general public. The tag description in sloppy handwriting is actually "The One, Fuyu Persimmon, Exserted, Open".

One of my questions this year is if I have really tasted very many really good tomato varieties. I'm curious to know what some of the dwarfs and Craig's top ten list tomatoes taste like. I am also growing a clump of F1 Sungold because it is one I have tasted and is sort of a similar fruity flavored tomato.

Yeah, I just figured I'd mention the officially named persimmon variety just in case. I've never grown it, but I doubt it actually tastes as much as a persimmon as your and joseph's lines do.

I'm actually really excited about all the various flavors popping out of this project. I knew Solanum pennellii had the most scent chemical compounds out of the wild tomato species, so it is cool to see the recombination and segregation with domestic tomato genetics. Some of the other wild species have some diversity as well, but I remember one study had said S. pennellii had the most and most unique chemicals too. Really cool stuff.

Considering tomatoes are botanically a fruit it is cool to see new types that have more fruity flavor. I really do think this project could change domestic tomato evolution drastically. Who knows if they will even have old style tomatoes in 200 years or if they will only be growing tropical flavored ones. haha. :)

My favorite domestic tomato is one I don't have a name for. I got it last year from the Sprouts farmers market store and was being marketed by the Rocket Farms in California.

https://rocketfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/133-orange-tomato-in-sleeve.png
(https://rocketfarms.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/133-orange-tomato-in-sleeve.png)
I think it is different than Sungold, but not sure what it is. It seems to be potato leaved and seems to be an extra thick stemmed dwarf variety. Nice dark tasty orange cherry tomatoes. For a domestic tomato I really like it. Just wish I knew the name.

My tomatoes are mostly in the ground.

In my kitchen garden, I planted about 30 plants that I think are fully self-incompatible.

In my main field, I planted the segregating hybrids from last year's F1 hybrids with SunSugar, and Solanum pimpinelifolium. I planted the segregating F2 hybrids of [potato-leaved Brad x Solanum habrochaites].

About 100 feet away in the main field, I planted the elite lines. Which have a mixed breeding system.

Still to plant is an isolated field of Solanum habrochaites.

I also have a bunch of F2 hybrids of [potato-leaved Brad x Solanum habrochaites] which I haven't decided what to do with. The potato-leaved plants would have selfed. The habrochaites-leaved might be selfed, or back-crossed with S habrochaites. I may grow them in pots until they flower.

I weeded the isolated The One! and Little Pumpkins patch today. I also transplanted a couple plants that were doubles into single spots and weeded out some volunteer Exserted Orange.

I also weeded the promiscuous second year direct seeded garden today. I found and removed one volunteer from that garden's last year direct seeding experiment which was a mix of genetics including the promiscuous project.

I have the tasty tropical fruit ones in four different gardens this year but only isolated in one. Hoping for crossing in the other three. Namely with my MMS x BH F2 or MMM, MMS, and maybe lots of things at the house and in the everything else garden.  My first experiment with the oldest plant at the house is to see if it self-pollinates though that might require buzzing.

Then I have the one I am calling Salmon growing in the everything else garden and promiscuous volunteers all around my direct seeded row.

I have a clump of R18 G3 planted in with a Solanum habrochaites accession known for multi-gene based late blight resistance at the house. I am hoping it crosses with that accession.

I have the F1 descendants of Promiscuous x LA2329 growing in the Arthropod resistance garden and one promiscuous project plant from one of the mothers I used last year that produced the FI hybrids.

Also, I may likely have some MMS x Promiscuous F1 plants out there in the everything else garden. Though not sure how I will tell them apart from MMS x BH F1 seedlings that are also possible. 

The few flowers I have had so far this year are a little disappointing in terms of flower structure. My biggest F1 Promiscuous x LA2329 is blooming and not exserted. I dissected the third blossom today as the older ones are about to fall off. The style is long and brings the stigma right to the tip of the anther cone so once there are more flowers on more plants and the next generation of this year's Bombus colonies come out it is at least possible it will accept some pollen!

Quote from: Joseph Lofthouse on 2022-06-11, 11:20:13 PM
My tomatoes are mostly in the ground.

Mine are mostly planted as well.

I just planted out the pennellii group and what I nicknamed the "Q" group. I don't actually remember if it has the Q series included, I'd have to go check my notes, but it has a mix of the ones from this project that sound like they may be the tastiest from Joseph and William. We will get what we get. Will need to do lots of taste testing after collecting fruits, especially from these plants.

All I have left to plant out are the peruvianum hybrids group and the Cheesmaniae group. Letting them aclimate a few days under partial shade. They are the shortest plants of all the tomatoes planted (minus the Rocket Orange cherry tomato that is somewhere between a dwarf and a micro tomato).

The Big Hill plants look to be growing fast.

In my far NW garden where I used to grow exserted orange I am growing out an isolation garden of my two tastiest promiscuous project tomatoes in 2021. I called them Little Pumpkins and The One! The thing I would like to report is that I can tell them apart by the plants. Little pumpkin seedlings are dark green, and The One are light green due to fuzz. The one seems to be some kind of dwarf. Little Pumpkins might be a little bit growthier.

I am going to be excited to find out how much flavor variation there is and if the good tropical flavor comes back. I also have them in three other gardens for backup should anything happen to the far garden. Sometimes it got munched a little by deer in the past but always produced plenty of fruit for seed production for exserted orange.

The plant of the The One! planted in the ground in the greenhouse is not as exserted or open as the mother and those in the field are blooming just a little later which makes me think that as a population it is a little later which is what I expected based on the mother plant being late to fruit. Hope it is not too late!

Also had a plainer strain I called exserted Salmon or just Salmon and I will be excited to find out if it is still decent like it was last year.

Hi, a little update

The first tomatoes on the wildling plants in my greenhouse have started to ripe this week and I have been sampling them for taste. Some tomatoes tasted bad but most of the orange ones taste real nice and one orange fruited tomato seems to be a tropical fruit tasting one! I've already made some crosses with it but I want to have as much as possible pure seeds from it. The flowers are not exterted so it probably is self pollinating.

Outdoor the first fruits are maturing on my Wildling selection and Wildling crosses with Matts wild cherry and Tomatito de jalapa. First fruits of these should ripen in the next weeks.
Q and BH series is also forming fruit.

Weather has been great so there is no problems with diseases yet.

Anyone have flowers yet?

After I had planted all mine out nearly all the "Q" group died in the full sun bed. I think its actually a mix of Q and several others that were reported to be throwing the tastiest ones,  so that stinks. Would need to check my notes. But nearly all the others in the shady-ish bed survived. Perhaps I didn't harden them off enough or planted them too early.

Had trouble keeping S. sitiens and S. lycopersicoides plants alive,  but in one raised planting bucket thing I have at least one of each. These two species may not cross readily with the other species but they reportedly easily cross with each other. Since they both have scented flowers that will be interesting. One is reported to have sweet flowers,  the other smelly flowers, so they have different evolved pollinator strategies. Would be cool to move scented flowers into this project.

None are flowering yet. Big Hill plants are the largest.  I hit my first edible tomato yesterday, but it was from the micro dwarf orange tomato. Much smaller plant than the plant I bought last year from the supermarket.

I have quite a bit of flowering. The selection I call little pumpkins is blooming, the one is in bud. Except for the older plant of the one which has been flowering awhile. I attempted using it as a pollen donor weekend before last. Will be interesting to see if any took this coming weekend.

My promiscuous x LA2329 are flowering at least two of them. LA2329 has buds already.

In general my tomato gardens are in the early flowering phase but it has picked up a lot. 50 degree nights are finally here.

The 2021 selection I call "The One!" is flowering pretty good finally but mostly just one big, fused blossom on the top. Just in terms of growth form all the 2022 grow out are pretty consistent. They have some kind of dwarf trait. The stem looks almost fasciated. The leaves kind of droop down. The uniformity and recognizability gives me the thought that it must have selfed or mostly selfed in 2021.

Little pumpkins by comparison may also be dwarf but it has a lot smaller flowers and doesn't have the same distinctive growth form.

The One! and Little Pumpkins patch has about 39 tomatoes on it total. None of them are yet ripe. Some plants, probably little Pumpkins plants have a lot. Many have just one or two, and many plants haven't set a tomato yet. Have been watering it fairly regularly of late about once a week or so.

There is one tomato on older The One! plant in the greenhouse.

It is hard to tell on the patch that is The One! mixed with MMS and MMM plants. There are a couple Little Pumpkins in that patch as well.

The The One! plants in the tightly mixed row got a little outcompeted but I think there are still a few. Also, the The One! plants that were planted kind of late in a tight little row of just them are still looking ok, but I don't see any fruit.

It would really be nice if more fruit would set! It would also be very interesting to get a cross made with The One!

I can't wait to see what comes of this experiment in flavor breeding.

However, I have a certain fear that we have bred a very tasty but very long season and unproductive tomato. If so, it might be a tomato that would really do well somewhere further south. It looks a bit wild in the leaves to me. Maybe it has some Solanum penellii genetics showing through in the leaves. I wonder if it would do well in California?!

I had a mostly S. pennellii plant (F3?) this year succumb to some sort of rust or blight from the potato plants, while most of the other tomatoes including Big Hill have shown no disease.

I think if it were me, I would try my best to do side by side comparisons of taste and segregate them into 2 or three groups of saved seeds.

Late season is not the end of the world, as it could always be used in a cross as an interesting parent line.

I've got some tomatoes growing, but it has not been a kind year. Some of the Big Hill plants almost seem to be acting like self-incompatible. I'll have to watch those plants to see if they set anything late and whether there are notable differences with the rest. So far no S. peruvianum or S. peruvianum hybrids setting any fruits, though they have the showiest flowers in the garden.

My Solanum peruvianum row has also got pretty flowers. I don't recall checking carefully for fruit set. Will try to next weekend. A few plants or clumps of plants were heavily predated by Colorado potato beetles. One plant a mostly domestic produced one early ripe fruit that proved to be empty. It however seems to now be loaded.

Last year, I attempted to pollinate Solanum pimpinelifolium, with pollen from the Beautifully Promiscuous and Tasty Tomatoes project, which I think are self-incompatible. The fruits from the collected seeds are ripening now.

The flavor of the ripening fruits approximates that of Solanum pimpinelifolium, so I am not impressed. They are ripening to yellow/orange, instead of the red that would have been expected from Mendelian genetics in highly inbred domestic lines. That is consistent with hybrids between red domestic tomatoes and Solanum habrochaites, which produces F1 fruits that are yellow/orange.

The crossed plants show hybrid vigor. They are growing much faster and larger than S pimpinelifolium. They are earlier. About 40% of the plants are hybrids. The rest are archetypal of pimpinelifolium.

Flower size and shape of the hybrids closely resembles S pimpinelifolium.

The fruits are much larger (1") than the current tomato mother (3/8").

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2022-08-08, 06:04:10 AM
My Solanum peruvianum row has also got pretty flowers. I don't recall checking carefully for fruit set. Will try to next weekend. A few plants or clumps of plants were heavily predated by Colorado potato beetles. One plant a mostly domestic produced one early ripe fruit that proved to be empty. It however seems to now be loaded.

I checked for fruit set, I even picked two or three fruits that seemed ripe. Decent fruit set. Need to weed the row- ideally.

Has anyone noticed any lines that are resistant or repellant of tomato hornworms?

Had the second round of picking of hornworms of decimated tomato plants. Oddly only the tomatoes in the raised black bucket planters are affected. The other two raised beds are not affected despite having all the same mostly half wild tomato varieties. I wonder if the soil in those planters is so terrible that these tomatoes attracted the moths when the others did not? Curious.

The S. peruvianum plants seem unaffected.

My S. Peruvianum row seemed pretty attractive to Colorado potato beetles.

I could send you some seed for LA2329 and back some LA1410. They are the foundation for my arthropod resistance project.

I've never had a tomato hornworm. I saw one once in Utah. Cool looking.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2022-08-17, 06:18:14 PM
My S. Peruvianum row seemed pretty attractive to Colorado potato beetles.

I could send you some seed for LA2329 and back some LA1410. They are the foundation for my arthropod resistance project.

I've never had a tomato hornworm. I saw one once in Utah. Cool looking.

Technically these ones might be tobacco hornworms, but they are more or less the same species. I've not seen them often,  but when I have its only been on tomato plants or grape vine leaves. They are huge. As big as my finger and squishy like a gummy bear when you grab them to pick them off. The moths must be equally as huge. I wonder if they pollinate flowers at night.

Tomato hornworms turn into hummingbird moths. They pollinate in late afternoon to evening.

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2022-08-17, 08:37:21 AM
Has anyone noticed any lines that are resistant or repellant of tomato hornworms?

Had the second round of picking of hornworms of decimated tomato plants. Oddly only the tomatoes in the raised black bucket planters are affected. The other two raised beds are not affected despite having all the same mostly half wild tomato varieties. I wonder if the soil in those planters is so terrible that these tomatoes attracted the moths when the others did not? Curious.

The S. peruvianum plants seem unaffected.

John Kempf has a lot of talks explaining how insects can only eat plants with unbalanced nutrition (often excess nitrogen but there are other potential issues). Sounds like you observed the phenomenon in action with your tomatoes on different soil.

One of my local friends recently had their entire garden wiped out by grasshoppers. Likely common species in the genus Melanoplus such as Melanoplus sanguinipes https://fieldguide.mt.gov/speciesDetail.aspx?elcode=IIORT01210 which given its massive range those of you in North America would likely recognize as a familiar species. They said the tomatoes were one of the last things but even trees and shrubs were defoliated. I worked with some grasshopper researchers a few years back on a small project for school and one of the things I found out was that they had studied the importance of grasshoppers for nutrient cycling. This is a very important natural process and the researchers actually opposed grasshopper control both chemical and biological because they thought it so important to allow the nutrient cycling to progress.

In my own garden this year I have struggled with Colorado potato beetle in just one of my seven gardens spread out over the eight useable acres of the garden land. It had a non-uniform effect on the tomato plants, and this could correlate to nutrients in part. For instance, it hit rather hard in an area where I added some composted barnyard manure, we purchased last year. The garden in question has potato beetles because it has a large natural population of an annual nightshade which attracts them. Then when the larvae are hungry, they also attack tomato plants. They attacked their preferred host even more this year and I had a question in my mind about if they would even produce seed. Not to fear I noticed some berries forming on the annual nightshade. I plan to turn this to my advantage next year and move the arthropod resistance project to the garden in question. However, I had wondered if the effect could be made more uniform within the garden. One thought I had would be to collect nightshade seed and seed it with the tomato seed. To try to make the nightshade sort of uniform in the hopes that would improve the uniformity of potato beetle attack. I've also wondered in places in this same garden if my tomato seedlings were suffering from a bit of flea beetle attack like what Joseph and Andrew describe in their direct seeding attempts. Not uniform though. It would be nice to have a nice uniform arthropod problem! Of course, I asked my friend with the grasshoppers if they might be willing to grow a replicate of the arthropod resistance project and they said yes. Though I doubt that will be nice and uniform two years in a row.

Hmm. Just had a thought. For the grasshopper experiments we used cages to keep them in. Also, it seems to me that it's just possible that Colorado potato beetles and larvae especially can be picked off one plant and placed on another.

Also, another thought. What if I used a bit of a unbalanced organic nitrogen source on a replicate like say just add blood meal? Or maybe specifically marked out a couple of the real problem spots this year to try to put a replicate in a problem spot specifically?

I wonder if standard soil testing might be able to pick up anything (like a nitrogen imbalance) about why a problem spot is a problem spot?

All in an attempt to get a replicate with uniform arthropod predation so that the differences between resistance in individuals would stand out. Hmm, would also be nice to have tomato clones.

Ok slight change of topic: Within this garden there is a patch of dense volunteer promiscuous project tomatoes. Because the patch is so dense fruit set is minimal. That is within species competition was very high. So these plants have been subjected to high competition and have exhibited some arthropod resistance as portions of the row got hit hard by the potato beetles. However, I might be looking at something like 20 small tomatoes from ~1000 dense plants. Interesting right? Also just saying, if your volunteer or direct seeded tomatoes come up too thick it might be a good idea to thin if you don't want to test for within species competitive ability or if you want very many seeds back. I generally never thin but there was a certain stretch of a direct seeded patch last year I seeded too densely and had a similar effect and now this. Wondering how Joseph's direct seeded patch did this year from a within species competition standpoint?

Also in contrast, Joseph sent me a relatively small seed lot for his survivors from his promiscuous project direct seeding in 2021. I seeded it in three rows, and it came up relatively sparsely and is looking great. It is in the Northeast Garden with the Carol Deppe squash, the flint corn, and what look to be some volunteer exserted tiger tomatoes but those are just far enough away from the promiscuous project tomatoes that I doubt much crossing will occur- possible but my guess is really low rates compared to if they were interplanted- which they were last year as last year's direct seeded mix in that garden included both ET and Promiscuous. The ET is also doing great, but it was bred largely by direct seeding in my garden so it kind of stands to reason that it would do great in my garden.

I have seen a plague of caterpillars- dozens of different species bursting into enormous populations at the same time. It happened after a prolonged drought (when nitrate tends to accumulate in soil) which was broken by a series of thunderstorms (which also dump nitrogen into the soil- you aren't imagining it when plants look extra green after storms). This was sustained over a long enough period to allow two generations of butterflies to reproduce and create the boom.

You have to wonder if such a nitrogen overflow is a functional part of the system and not some kind of error.

As to your questions- definitely check out the extensive work of John Kempf on plant-insect relationships. No need to reinvent the wheel.

I got several more just first blush ripe "The One" fruits and a little pumpkins fruit that I would be very surprised if has any seeds.

I also got the first few ripe fruits from the Lofthouse direct seeded promiscuous project plants.

Quote from: S.Simonsen on 2022-08-20, 03:01:07 PM
I have seen a plague of caterpillars- dozens of different species bursting into enormous populations at the same time. It happened after a prolonged drought (when nitrate tends to accumulate in soil) which was broken by a series of thunderstorms (which also dump nitrogen into the soil- you aren't imagining it when plants look extra green after storms). This was sustained over a long enough period to allow two generations of butterflies to reproduce and create the boom.

You have to wonder if such a nitrogen overflow is a functional part of the system and not some kind of error.

As to your questions- definitely check out the extensive work of John Kempf on plant-insect relationships. No need to reinvent the wheel.

Interesting. I had tried to also grow peas in these planters this year and they did poor. Nitrogen excess could be a real possibility.

In all three spots, especially the other two, I think LA1996 has been doing the best in terms of production,  lack of disease,  and some resistance to poor soil. The slight purple blush on the fruits might also deter pests to some degree. Perhaps the S. chilense ancestry has a big effect. Might be worth crossing into this project by hand.

Crosses are fun.

Had a small tomato from MMS x unknown. Bright red. Figured was MMS x ET till I cut it open. Kind of yellow inside. Great flavor. MMS x promiscuous I'm guessing.

Tried my first "The One" still good. 10 seeds.

Tried my first little pumpkins yellow and yucky, need to pull that plant! Zero seeds.

Tried my first five ripe direct seeded promiscuous all yucky, bitter. Fermenting the seed but wrote a yucky warning on it already. Not sure if I should toss them?!

So The One has the same persimmon taste this year William ? :)

Ohhh, if that flavour is passed down, that's good news!

Quote from: Nicollas on 2022-08-25, 12:11:05 PM
So The One has the same persimmon taste this year William ? :)

The first fruit was similar. Maybe not quite as good. More data soon.

Edit: a bit more data. I had three more the one each from a different mother plant. The yellow one tasted ok but not nearly as good as last year. The orange one tasted a little bit yucky / bitter but with an undercurrent of last year's fruitiness. The big one tasted quite good very similar to last year- but was completely seed free.

So there is quite a bit of variation yet.

Two more "The One" descendents today. Both good. One I thought better than the other. Three fruits from the former one from the later  Lots of seeds in them. Saved them- they are fermenting now.

I have four plants worth of ripe tomatoes to try of the promiscuous direct seeded project. Hoping for one I really like.

Got three tomatoes one each from three different plants from the promiscuous volunteers. Tried and seed saved the ripest. It was red with green shoulders. It had a good but definitely not normal tomato flavor. It is fermenting now.

Just decanted some seeds, multiple descendents of the one. Varied on flavor. My wife said the best of them which we both tried was still less than last year's plant. I threw out one because I wrote that it was yucky and bitter.

Several deliberate wild crosses including MMM x LA2329 and Promiscuous x LA2329 and the latter looked so much better. More viable in appearance. Also my only promiscuous plant in the LA2329 crossing block is better tasting this year. I should taste it again and potentially save some more seeds. This gives credence to the idea that descendents of wild crosses are easier to cross again with the wild parent.

Oh, in the The One isolation garden there is one plant that is currently looking very penellii.

Working on the tasty part is hard. Rejecting a lot of the direct seeded and volunteers for bitterness.

Just a note on R18. I have a lovely looking clump of R18 this year. The only thing is it hasn't bloomed. Probably too crowded and shaded. Thats probably it for that strain this year.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2022-08-31, 09:10:25 PM
Working on the tasty part is hard. Rejecting a lot of the direct seeded and volunteers for bitterness.

Ok so went down to the direct seeded patch with a couple friends to help taste thinking I would rip out some plants because I rejected most of the individual tomatoes last week. Did not reject any plants. I know some of them are the same plants. Kind of frustrating.

I'm planning my seeds purchases for this fall to be planted in 2023.  One of my goals is to start growing and breeding tomatoes optimized for Vermont, and I see the Beautifully Promisuous and Tasty Tomato genetic lines as the critical base for it.

Right now Experimental Farm Network doesn't have any Panamorous seeds in stock, either Q-series or Wildling. They don't have any Promiscuous seeds even listed.

Any here who is involved in the project know if seeds from the 2022 Project grow-out are going to become available this fall?

Quote from: Cathy A on 2022-09-11, 02:43:54 PM
I'm planning my seeds purchases for this fall to be planted in 2023.  One of my goals is to start growing and breeding tomatoes optimized for Vermont, and I see the Beautifully Promisuous and Tasty Tomato genetic lines as the critical base for it.

Right now Experimental Farm Network doesn't have any Panamorous seeds in stock, either Q-series or Wildling. They don't have any Promiscuous seeds even listed.

Any here who is involved in the project know if seeds from the 2022 Project grow-out are going to become available this fall?

Message me your address and how many seeds you need and what traits you like.

Quote from: Cathy A on 2022-09-11, 02:43:54 PMRight now Experimental Farm Network doesn't have any Panamorous seeds in stock, either Q-series or Wildling. They don't have any Promiscuous seeds even listed.

Any here who is involved in the project know if seeds from the 2022 Project grow-out are going to become available this fall?

I expect Q to be discontinued and replaced by a newer generation.

I expect Wildling to become available again.

I expect a new F2 population to be released [Solanum pimpinelifolium X polyamourous]

Interesting, that is the first i'd heard of S. pimpinelifolium. It's impressively to hear how many different varieties of Solanum have potential to cross with our friendly, well-known S. lycopersicum.

Joseph and William, any progress with the supposed S. Peruvianum hybrid lines or introgression lines?

I have a few fruits this year from some seeds William was kind enough to replace for me after last year's awful tomato mishap. But so far the fruits are small and look to be typical peruvianum. One plant smells like anise or licorice though and that is the first time smelling that scent in a tomato lime before. Hoping this project keeps making progress with this species to eventually make bigger domestic-like fruits.

Cathy, welcome to the project. To be clear though,  S. peruvianum is NOT an easy species to get hybrids with,  but it has very interesting genetics. Joseph is working on domestication from scratch for this species.

LA4136 is essentially a domestic but with some obvious interspecies traits. Set a decent amount of seed.

I've made a post on Breeding for Permaculture FB group about sharing my lines of promiscous tomatoes, but i think folks here could benefit a repost :)

My progress on the promicuous (self-incompatible + showy flowers) project initiated by Joseph.
This lines are from a parent which was very LB tolerant in 2021. From the same parent with yellow fruits, i've got descendant with yellow, orange and red fruits. Self-incompatibility help with shuffling genes 🙂 The plants this year had very showy flowers, a few fruit set (downside of SI in the first years i guess), and should have been pollinated among themselves and with mostly LB resistant cultivars around. No test of LB resistance this year due to no rain this summer.

I'm not aware of promiscous lines being offered now, so i'm happy to share seeds with folks that would try their hands on genetic that has potential for high diversity and selection, self-solving challenges thanks to evolution.
I guess best option, beside planting it with other promiscous lines, is to associate it with cultivars that do well in the region, and lines with showy flowers (there are some info on such cultivars on OSSI board and we could contribute with our own knowledge).

If you are interested, drop me a private message or directly a mail

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My seed crop of "The One" has failed in that I hoped it would produce an ounce or so of seeds that could be widely shared. Instead it has produced a few packets worth. I suppose I will be sending a packet to Joseph and one to Andrew. Opened a tomato today that gave me hope that more productive plants may be possible within the line.

Over in the SW garden I did a Mission Mountain x The One / fruity crossing block. Deliberate crosses failed but if the bees did their job some of the seedlings should be crossed. Had the one, MMS, MMM, and little pumpkins in the block.

I collected seed mainly from MMM and The One descendents.

However, the photo is a mix of the two for direct seeding! I am not sure if I will use the mix, but it has the potential to keep the crossing block going another year. F1 hybrids would likely fair better than pure The One / Fruity because the strain is slow to produce ripe fruit and unproductive. If I grow out the other saved packets first and find hybrids there, I may just keep the mix in storage or add it in with another mix.

In the project overall is it a mix of indeterminate and determinate? Or is determinate being more selected for because of short season?

I see that people use grafting to get hardier root/stem on other less hardy plants. I have never done grafting.

Would it be plausible to identify plants you like and graft their branches on to other plants? This would bring their flowers very close together and in theory raise the likelihood of them crossing.

Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2022-12-04, 09:29:41 PMIn the project overall is it a mix of indeterminate and determinate? Or is determinate being more selected for because of short season?

I can't tell for sure. A mix is possible. I think Big Hill a major domestic parent of the project and a determinate is a little bit of a cheater of a determinate in that it seems to keep producing. I think determinate was selected against in the early generations because it makes it harder for a plant with obligate outcrossing to reproduce. I had one plant like that- it just stopped blooming for a long time. Back around 2019. Pretty sure that plant was an obligate outcrosser and a determinate- and also pretty sure that was a fatal or near fatal combination.

Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2022-12-04, 09:37:12 PMI see that people use grafting to get hardier root/stem on other less hardy plants. I have never done grafting.

Would it be plausible to identify plants you like and graft their branches on to other plants? This would bring their flowers very close together and in theory raise the likelihood of them crossing.

Sure, but you could also just root branches from them and plant them in a clump. Which would probably be easier.

I've posted a link to the cold hardiness thread about how grafting onto cold hardy habrochaites increased hardiness of tomatoes. But grafting is time consuming, i think the way of the promiscous project is addressing the problem (self-incompatibility and selection among a lot of seedlings) much more practicable at the end.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2022-12-04, 10:26:46 PMSure, but you could also just root branches from them and plant them in a clump. Which would probably be easier.

How easy is it to root branches from tomatoes?  I've seen someone in a YouTube video just cut off a branch and plant it in another part of the garden.  Is that all you need to do?

If so, wow, cloning would be very easy.

Quote from: Nicolas on 2022-12-04, 11:24:58 PMI've posted a link to the cold hardiness thread about how grafting onto cold hardy habrochaites increased hardiness of tomatoes. But grafting is time consuming, i think the way of the promiscous project is addressing the problem (self-incompatibility and selection among a lot of seedlings) much more practicable at the end.

Yeah, I would personally prefer to not have to use grafting.  I'm willing to use it -- it's a great tool, especially for perennials that'll stick around for many years -- but I'd rather breed something that is entirely the kind of plant I want, from top to bottom.

Ahh makes sense that limited blooming and limited to cross pollination would be a problem.

Interesting. I thought since they rooted so easily that they would graft easily. I may try one just for fun since I've never done it. I had a tomato stem snap off and I just set it up pressed together and it must have worked it out because I couldn't even figure out which plant it was later.

I was thinking you could have your habrochaites and then chop the top off and graft a branch of an exserted domestic on. Then you'd basically have two plants for the space of one in the garden. The lower branches of habro and the rest of the plant being the graft.

Quote from: UnicornEmily on 2022-12-04, 11:25:49 PMHow easy is it to root branches from tomatoes?  I've seen someone in a YouTube video just cut off a branch and plant it in another part of the garden.  Is that all you need to do?

If so, wow, cloning would be very easy.

I throw them in water till they root.

Yep. Here we tend to get fairly regular rain and it's humid. You can tell the plants need pruned because the whole lower plant every stem will start to root up to like 8 inches high. Humid and air not moving enough they will root. If it touches the ground it'll be rooted tight in a few days.

I can just let my plants sprawl and I've never pruned one. They don't root! If you did that they would root and the tomatoes would be hard to pick.

In my experience fully domestic tomatoes root very easily. Wild tomatoes do not,  or at least are semi-resistant to rooting on cuttings. It can be done, but clearly this is a trait that was selected for in domestic tomatoes.

Perhaps that is the exact reason domestic tomatoes are not as cold hardy??!!

Regardless, wild or semi wild tomatoes can be rooted from cuttings but pre scaring a node or two or pre scaring the branch before trying to root will increase your success.

Some of the ancestors of the Beautifully Promiscuous and Tasty Tomato project were determinate. That is because determinate tomatoes tend to mature quicker, which is important in my garden.

After the initial crosses, I have not intentionally selected for determinate, nor indeterminate. I haven't even been paying attention to that trait, though I'd guess that most of the Wildling population are indeterminate, and most of the Q-series are determinate.

While Jagodka is determinate (meaning that each stem terminates in a flower cluster), each leaf node sends out a new stem, so that the plant is in continuous production.

Just to clarify a point Joseph just made. Jagodka is the determinate ancestor of Big Hill HX-9 which is also determinate from Joseph's cross between Jagodka and Hillbilly. Not sure if some that are newer to the forum would follow that connection.

Ahh good to know

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:
"While Jagodka is determinate (meaning that each stem terminates in a flower cluster), each leaf node sends out a new stem, so that the plant is in continuous production."

That's interesting. Most discussion of indeterminate vs. determine tomatoes assumes that determinates produce all at once for canning sauce, salsa, marinara, etc., and indeterminates produce continuously for fresh use.

If a tomato variety could produce continuously for fresh tomatoes but also remain relatively short and strong-stemmed, requiring minimum support, that could be a very popular combination of traits.

This graph shows the cumulative number of fruits harvested from my cold/frost tolerant trials.

This is why I chose Jagodka to be my primary tomato for market production. It is very productive early in the season when tomatoes are in higher demand, and prices are better. First fall frost is about September 5th.

harvest-2013.png

Looks like growing Jagodka and Nevskiy Red together would yield a long, productive season!

I plan to try Jagodka this year as one element of the Vermont Short & Sweet project. It looks promising.

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2023-04-24, 08:18:33 PMJoseph, are there any other interesting traits or phenotypes you've observed in the wild breeding that seem interesting to you? How do you feel your efforts are progressing? Where do you see it heading next?

I noticed lots of super interesting traits in the inter-species tomato clade. For the time being, I focus mostly of restoring a robust self-incompatibility system as my primary breeding goal. I age, and loose ambition and strength. The project will soon pass into other hands.

Other traits of interest.

• Hollow fruits like in peppers
• Woody stems like in peppers
• Fruit colors I don't see in domestic tomatoes
• So many flavors
• So many aromas in fruits and leaves
• So much to do with flower shapes and sizes
• I really like short internode distances, which makes weeding easier.
• So many leaf shapes
• Some of the clade resisted frost months after the domestic tomatoes died
• The paintball texture of some fruits fascinates me
• I don't like fuzzy fruits, but I might if they resist animals or blights
• I like hairy stems and leaves
• I have never observed blossom end rot in the interspecies clade.

Joseph, I hope that you will remain involved in the wild solanum projects as long as you can. At some point that may mean an emeritus role where you provide advice and guidance rather than doing the breeding yourself.

Breeding the wild solanums into varieties useful for humans is the most exciting thing I have seen happen in the world of tomatoes for decades, perhaps even in the past century.

If domestic tomatoes were a dead end before, they are certainly not anymore now that wild genes can be crossed with them and whole new traits and genetic diversity created.

I direct seeded about 210 row feet of tomato seed from Joseph's promiscuous tomato project today. 70 row feet of The One! 10 row feet of R18 and 130 row feet of a mix which included a variety including XL reds, bicolor which turned red or pink after being planted next to the XL strain the prior year. A few bicolor exserted favorites from prior direct seeding efforts. The panamorous direct seeded project was included. I used two isolation gardens for the direct seedings. I have two flats of late transplants started as well. Will see if those get planted in these same gardens or elsewhere. I still have two unused gardens. Though I also am down two rototillers and quite a bit of time!

70 row feet of The One is impressive. Hopefully you will get significant variation within that line, and some will replicate the features that gave The One its name, but also with more seeds per fruit.

My tomatoes this year are limited to three 4 ft x 4 ft beds, but I have squeezed in 51 plants of various varieties, plus 20 Wildling Panamorous.

I agree 70 foot row should be a good amount to taste test to see if you can find any that replicate the original. And if not you could still taste test and reselect the best flavored.

I am limited to two "The One" plants this year. I gifted two "The One" plants to my parents as well. Curious how close these taste to real persimmons.

Quote from: Joseph Lofthouse on 2023-01-10, 09:14:50 AMThis graph shows the cumulative number of fruits harvested from my cold/frost tolerant trials.

This is why I chose Jagodka to be my primary tomato for market production. It is very productive early in the season when tomatoes are in higher demand, and prices are better. First fall frost is about September 5th.

(https://opensourceplantbreeding.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;attach=4242;type=preview;file"%5Dhttp://harvest-2013.png)

I really like visual data like this! I wish more people took quantitative data to look at and evaluate.

It looks like from these varieties a really good cross from your Jagodka x Nevskiy Red could produce something really useful in the domestic realm. I won't be doing that cross or growing these varities, but it sounds like someone on the forum is.

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2023-05-21, 09:28:04 AMI agree 70 foot row should be a good amount to taste test to see if you can find any that replicate the original. And if not you could still taste test and reselect the best flavored.

I am limited to two "The One" plants this year. I gifted two "The One" plants to my parents as well. Curious how close these taste to real persimmons.

Not that close its more a loss for words to describe a taste phenomenon that we use these comparisons. Though also unlikely to be that close to the original 2021 selected plant. I would expect this G3 to vary from normal bicolor to various degrees of fruity. The original was very fruity and not recognizably tomatoey as I recall. I actually had to buy a box of Fuyu persimmon again after the experience in 2021 and there is something there but it is / was different too.

I'm very interested in finding or breeding some tomato varieties that are "not tomatoey". Hopefully the wild genes are helping us make progress in that direction.

From reading the forums here, it sounds like no one has stabilized a tomato variety that is clearly fruity and not tomatoey?

Quote from: Cathy A on 2023-05-21, 03:20:37 PMFrom reading the forums here, it sounds like no one has stabilized a tomato variety that is clearly fruity and not tomatoey?

That nasty lycopene flavor has mostly been eliminated from the populations that I work on.

There may be some! It seems like there is a fairly long list of fruity tomatoes and I have not tried them all!

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-05-21, 10:35:47 PMThere may be some! It seems like there is a fairly long list of fruity tomatoes and I have not tried them all!

Maybe we should start compiling a list ofv reported fruity tasting tomatoes. It seems they almost always are some shade of orange yellow or white.

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2023-05-22, 06:26:29 AMMaybe we should start compiling a list ofv reported fruity tasting tomatoes. It seems they almost always are some shade of orange yellow or white.

Psst https://opensourceplantbreeding.org/forum/index.php/topic,796.0.html

Quote from: Nicolas on 2023-05-22, 10:50:18 AMPsst https://opensourceplantbreeding.org/forum/index.php/topic,796.0.html

Thanks.  I forgot!!!!

My mostly direct seeded mixed garden of the Lofthouse promiscuous tomato project. Newly weeded. Have ten feet of R18 plus five R18 transplants. Also 10 feet of The One! Rest is a mix of the project including XL, polyamorous direct seeded, and some other seed I saved.

Saw two potato leaf seedlings in one of the rows. Could be Mission Mountain Sunrise. Or a Brad descendant. None outside of a row.

The bigger more mixed mostly direct seeded Lofthouse promiscuous garden tonight.

My 2023 grow out of The One! Probably  from S34, S35, S36. 7-16-23

Watering ended up a little uneven.

Main field for this project for me this year freshly watered 7-15-23.

The Wildling Panamorous are starting to produce fruit. However, I am seeing a strange form of damage on the surface of a couple of the fruits, but not on every plant.

I am seeing a lot of snail and slug pressure this year, but nothing that looks like this.

Wilding damaged 8-11-23.jpgWildling damaged good side 8-11-23.jpg 

This is the same fruit, shown front and back.

Any ideas as to the cause?

Interesting. I get sometimes a fruit that looks kind of like the front. Don't know why. 

Looks sort of early generation wild cross to me. Might just be a cull in many practical ways. Early generation plants from these crosses did produce a lot of gross fruit both flavor and appearance. R18 is still kind of like that but it is close and has the huge flowers.

Most damage I get is rodent feeding. Sometimes I get blossom end rot or splitting.

Delicious Q series today, very pretty! Unfortunately I haven't even seen any petals, it seems the flowers are really tiny, maybe hiding in the sepals? Unless they keep only doing their thing when I'm not there? I wish I had planted more of them, maybe next year. So far this one has the biggest fruit. And it was relatively early.
Q4.jpg

Oh that has the Brad spots. Brad was a lost name potato leaf red variety with gold spots that came to Joseph and did well in his short season. Name lost by the grower prior to Joseph, variety collectors in BC,- seed mislabeled or crossed or something.

The polyamorous direct seeded in 2022 in my garden had Brad spots.

If it ripens and nothing else eats it. I have a take of The One! X (MMM x (Promiscuous x LA2329)). This would have Big Hill HX-9 in its ancestry thrice. Habrochaites thrice and penellii twice. Percentages would be complex but should be just over 25%

Would be a nice addition to The One! x MMM also green on the vine. Which would have HX-9 Big Hill in its ancestry twice and be about 12.5% wild. 6.25% habrochaites 6.25% penellii.

I'm looking forward to trying the Q-series next year.

The Wildling plants have been very tall (for dwarfs), strong, and healthy, and they are currently producing fruit. So far I haven't been excited about the fruit, but that's not a surprise since we are still selecting for desired traits in that gene pool.

I tested some of my Wildling seeds for germination rate a bit late into the season, and the two plants that made it are making flowers now, one with the double-petaled open-anatomy flowers, and one with typical flowers.

The anatomy of the promiscuous flowers is really interesting to examine. They're very big when still budding, so you can tell pretty early which kind of flowers it'll have. I tried to manually pollinate with an anther cone from a different plant, but the stigma is thick and bar-shaped, so it was a little tricky. Not sure if it took, hopefully it did. Definitely planting a bunch of these next year.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-08-13, 10:13:14 PMIf it ripens and nothing else eats it. I have a take of The One! X (MMM x (Promiscuous x LA2329)). This would have Big Hill HX-9 in its ancestry thrice. Habrochaites thrice and penellii twice. Percentages would be complex but should be just over 25%

Would be a nice addition to The One! x MMM also green on the vine. Which would have HX-9 Big Hill in its ancestry twice and be about 12.5% wild. 6.25% habrochaites 6.25% penellii.

Something ate it green! It disappeared!

The One! X MM on the other hand is now fermenting. I tasted it. It's just ok. It's a bit red. Still a nice cross between a volunteer Mission Mountain potato leaf and a volunteer of a nice strain of the promiscuous tomato project.

I've started picking the 2023 direct seeded patch. Just a few earlies so far. I recognize the Brad spots of 2022's Polyamorous direct seeded.

I've got tiny fruit on both of my potted Wildling tomatoes. The one with the open, promiscuous flowers was manually crossed with some anther cones gathered from what I remember purchasing being called Pink Opal, but I'm not 100% sure. It also had extended stigmas.
Unless I pollinated it with a Gold Nugget, which is also a potential. In either case, the pollen donor was productive and did well in my garden, so it should be fun to see what comes up next year.

My 2023 grow out of this project currently has half a five-gallon bucket of seed fermenting.

I think the grex is being dominated by the descendants of the 2022 grow out of Joseph's polyamorous direct seeded grex. They are mostly red, gold spotted, regular leaf descendants of Brad. So three generations of direct seeding!

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-09-03, 10:00:38 AMMy 2023 grow out of this project currently has half a five-gallon bucket of seed fermenting.

I think the grex is being dominated by the descendants of the 2022 grow out of Joseph's polyamorous direct seeded grex. They are mostly red, gold spotted, regular leaf descendants of Brad. So three generations of direct seeding!

Very nice!

I had saved the fruits of The One G3 separately and ultimately after cutting them open tossed most of the seeds to ferment with the main grex. I kept out the seeds of two fruits. The population seems to have become a mix of red, orange, and bicolor fruits much like the general population of the project.

The two fruits I kept separate, I actually thought perhaps might be F1's with the Mission Mountain tomatoes. If true- they would segregate nicely for blue next year. Curiosities.

I have some cherry tomatoes in the main grex that may not belong at all. Though if not, it is my mistake for including them in the seed mix.

Sort of a typical cluster with the gold Brad spots.

Here is something I am thinking of as a mysterious long tress black skin orange cherry. It tastes great.

I am not certain if the dark skin is antho it might be a dark black pigment that showed up in the project some years ago.

I'm not sure if this was something I added to the seed mix or how this variant came about. It doesn't mentally match anything in particular from the past of my garden. Though I could see where it might have come from. Not sure what crossed with what but this must have segregated out of something I thought probably belonged in the project.

I did add in a few seed packets that now I am suspicious of. A small furry orange tomato I found in my 2022 direct seeded mix. A few other things like that. Too many current sized things. One straight up blue tomato forming. I'm not adding those to the seed saving bin as I dont think they belong. Hopefully perhaps they will contribute pollen.
 This variant though- I already saved a tiny bit of seed to which I will add the two tresses I picked tonight. Separately though. Hmm. Mysterious tomatoes!

Picked a few more from the project this evening. Deliberately grabbed some large pink ones. I don't want it to be all small red gold spotted tomatoes.

Looks like lots of great tomatoes!

Seeds in process. Photo during rinse. Now in food dehydrator.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-09-03, 08:19:17 PMHere is something I am thinking of as a mysterious long tress black skin orange cherry. It tastes great.

I am not certain if the dark skin is antho it might be a dark black pigment that showed up in the project some years ago.

I'm not sure if this was something I added to the seed mix or how this variant came about. It doesn't mentally match anything in particular from the past of my garden. Though I could see where it might have come from. Not sure what crossed with what but this must have segregated out of something I thought probably belonged in the project.

I did add in a few seed packets that now I am suspicious of. A small furry orange tomato I found in my 2022 direct seeded mix. A few other things like that. Too many current sized things. One straight up blue tomato forming. I'm not adding those to the seed saving bin as I dont think they belong. Hopefully perhaps they will contribute pollen.
 This variant though- I already saved a tiny bit of seed to which I will add the two tresses I picked tonight. Separately though. Hmm. Mysterious tomatoes!

Looks 100% like anthocyanin to me. For sure it is not homozygous for both Aft and atv, likely either hetero for both or simply hetero or homo Aft. The atv tends to express more in the foliage and if homozygous has very obvious dark leaves (especially when the nights cool in the fall).

That's what I thought a few years ago. Joseph insisted their are two such traits.

It could just be antho though. Might look black with the orange background.

I also thought it was blue earlier.

If it is just Antho it might not have belonged in this seed mix at all.

My fickle memory.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-09-04, 02:37:46 PMtwo such traits

Yes indeed, Aft and atv, which have a synergystic effect in combination? Different genes/traits but both related to anthocyanin production...

Interesting cherry whatever it came from. I don't remember one like it with this combination of traits so it segregated from something even if just something so simple as Blue Ambrosia crossing back to a Sungold. Blue Ambrosia is Lee Goodwin's Ambrosia dehybridization of sungold crossed to a blue tomato. I played with it a lot in 2017 to 2019 because 4 out of five plants I planted in 2017 had extreme exsertion of the stigma. So I daubed pollen from a wide variety of tomatoes on those stigmas.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-09-03, 08:19:17 PMThis variant though- I already saved a tiny bit of seed to which I will add the two tresses I picked tonight. Separately though. Hmm. Mysterious tomatoes!

Reminds me of one of my galapagense:
IMG_5045.jpg

Quote from: Maf on 2023-09-04, 04:56:58 PMYes indeed, Aft and atv, which have a synergystic effect in combination? Different genes/traits but both related to anthocyanin production...

I mentioned this elsewhere, but Peruvianum supposedly has genes which aren't either of those two.


Nor are they the same genes on different chromosomes.



I'm probably going to cross Purple Smudge over to Sart Roloise or something with full antho coverage - both of the anthocyanin genes which give full coverage in domestic tomatoes.



I've tried presenting a few mentions from the creators of Indigo Rose, which pretty much confirm that Purple Smudge doesn't have any of the purple genes found in Chilense, Galapagense or other sorts of tomatoes.

They specifically mention it having a Peruvianum anthocyanin gene.



My research on finding what genes give Peruvianum any anthocyanin traits, usually brings me over to studies that talk about bioprocessors.

They mention that stress can create higher antho fruits. Temperature changes.

I think watering had a place in those studies as well.


Different bio synthesizers than related species or something.




Two people I've brought this subject up to, usually say that it has Aft - the other mentioned that it has no wild genes and it was created with novel something.



I did confirm that from older studies that Purple Smudge was created using Solanum peruvianum, and a ton of backcrosses.

Some older hybrids seem to have the whole "backcross this a ton of times until it's disease resistant or probably is."



I also had issues with Purple Smudge accepting any pollen from Muddy Waters and some other varieties when I first grew it.

Indigo Rose was only sold as numerical numbers back then, and there wasn't a ton of Antho tomatoes around at the time. I didn't wanna purchase what was a stolen or leaked variety either.



It took like a year or two after I grew those before a ton of antho varieties popped out of the woodwork.




Either way, if I can cross Purple Smudge and Sart Roloise - I could then select for antho traits from both varieties or see if they're the same or similar.

If these have the same antho trait, plants may self abort because having the same antho gene on different chromosomes can be fatal.



Some antho traits also seem to gain deeper colors when exposed to a lot of cold. The Purple color then lasts late into the year and on later growth. Plus it stunts the plants.



Burnley Bounty has a late flowering or daylight sensitive gene.

It's also an older Peruvianum cross. Probably with a different parent than Purple Smudge.

Payette has been mentioned elsewhere.



Most people seem to just grow things out or try a single cross and see if things act better as bridges or not.


Peruvianum seems to be a species, it's first generation offspring and some others, won't easily accept pollen from it. Or they get random mixes of genes from it.



I believe that these varieties probably have some genes that could up the chances of being pollinated by Peruvianum. But they probably lost some things here and there that would've helped that happen.



I may or may not grow out Double Rich and Payette.


I want Burnley Bounty and Purple Smudge mixed into a wild line as well.

Probably using multiple backcrosses.


And I'd like them to have exserted flowers.


Burnley Bounty mixed with a descendant of Orange Hill or something similar in a wild line, would act as a decent base material.



Purple Smudge, is already orange. So there's that.





There are also Purple fruited Solanum muricatum.


Pepinos are probably just as related to tomatoes as Solanum lycopersicoides is, or something like that.


So, I still have a goal of planting some of its wild relatives next to each other, and growing out hybrids and things near wild tomato crosses.



Most of the tropical flavors that people usually look for, are already found in Pepinos.



I'm hoping to grow these sort of things next year finally. Pepinos.

Purple pepinos have been hard to source in the United States.

And I'm assuming that they have a different form of anthocyanin gene than tomatoes or their relatives. I could be wrong. I can't find much of anything on their antho genes.




Unfortunately pepinos still aren't Purple on the inside of them.

The quart bag on the right is the promiscuous project bag. The bag on the left is four ounces of my grex. So guessing I got about four ounces worth of the promiscuous as well.

Question now is if I should save any more seed or what the demand will be for promiscuous mix for the Going to Seed group.

One ounce is typically enough for a tomato variety unless it is very popular.

Slight Antho?! Might be The One x MM? In the F1?!

Purple / chocolate from the project.

Dark green shoulders.

Has anyone grown Epstein's Big Zac Tomato, or Steakhouse hybrid (it has another name in Europe if I remember correctly)?

These would be 2.5 - 4lb tomatoes.

Some of them can still have heavy production, despite their sizes.


Phil's Two, has Reisetomate genetics and would probably give a large tomato if crossed into one of these super sized ones. But I don't think it would work too well for general purposes.



I haven't been able to think of a huge reasoning to breed for larger tomatoes, as most people use them for sandwiches, which other tomatoes can serve that purpose.



But, the Get Stuffed tomato, and Douchoua Pepper tomato, are pretty hollow inside. Those, I also don't view in a good light. They're too small to use for stuffing.



Has anyone here thought of encorporating these into a Promiscuous line and creating large stuffing tomatoes? I'd imagine that some wild genetics could also create stronger structures to hold up larger fruits.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-09-08, 08:13:52 PMPurple / chocolate from the project.

Dark green shoulders.

That looks similar to a single tomato plant from the Wildling Panamorous line. My chocolate color was only seen close to the skin, but this could be random non-genetic variation.

I saved seeds from this plant separately.

Quote from: Garrett Schantz on 2023-09-09, 06:22:51 AMPhil's Two, has Reisetomate genetics and would probably give a large tomato if crossed into one of these super sized ones. But I don't think it would work too well for general purposes.

Definitely not. Having grown Phil's Two this year, I find it has the same problem Reisentomate has, the different segments ripen at different times, so harvesting one without losing some tov either under or overripeness is hard (they connections are not so tenuous as to allow you to pluck off segments as they are ready, you'll still have more than enough open tomato flesh to let bacteria and molds get in before the wound suberizes).

Yeah, that's the problem I've had with Reisetomate in the past.

Its cool as something to grab portions from, and carry around like that, or to wait for it all to ripen after tearing pieces off.

It also increases the size of the "tomato."

But for a standard tomato, or wanting to increase fruit size, it wouldn't work too well.


With Reisetomate, I'd always have to give fruits a wiggle rather than pull them off - they don't always detatch very well, like you mentioned.


Phil's Two, I may just grow out for fun.



But yeah, a large tomato may work well as a stuffer, if it's hollow.

A hollow tomato that's large, also may not take up as much energy as a meaty one.


Some XL tomatoes, only get a few tomatoes per plant, and need a ton of support.

Hollow tomatoes also may mean lighter tomatoes as well.

Oscar Pearson Hard Fruit Tomato, I grew that at some point.

That was a longer lasting tomato.

I don't think it grew well for me or something.

I'll have to check if I have seed, but I don't think I have that anymore.



That had a thick skin, many people call tomatoes like that "storage tomatoes", there's a series of tomatoes which was bred in a similar way.

I can't quite remember the name.



I was thinking a bit more, and a tomato with thicker skin, and is hollow, plus huge.

Those may all pair well together.


I don't have a list of tomatoes like that variety though. And there are varieties from Oscar Pearson, but they aren't the hard fruit type.



I'm considering a newer line to add into the project. Why not.


Maybe it'll peak some peoples interest and more people will come over.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2020-02-07, 05:12:55 PMAlso found dwarf hirsutum cross saved seed but it has super inserted flowers so I doubt it will produce any crosses. I think also I would be happy with one plant of that. I think I just want to grow a plant or so of Wild Child, Dwarf Hirsutum Cross, and Weight in Gold basically for comparative purposes between the three and with our high percentage habrochaites projects. They are all stabilized high percentage habrochaites red domestic types from Lee Goodwin's J and L gardens.

Hi William! Just came across this bit you wrote. I have been really curious how much wild percentage parentage Lee's wild cross tomatoes have but have been unable to find any info on it. How do you know they are high percentage? And any idea of roughly how much?

Thanks!

I was just going off the limited info on Lee's website. I don't know for sure.

From my own experiences working with Joseph's crosses and now my own. We got the first elites when Joseph brought the percentage down to 25%.

So last year I brought the percentage down on my first crosses with LA2329 to ~25%. Turns out only one plant of that lineage produced seed. (I'm using the ~ symbol to indicate its not quite 25% as one parent was elites from Joseph's promiscuous project). I suspect some elites might segregate out from thr saved seed next year.

I made subsequent ~12.5% crosses and those are now in seed packets. Next year I hope for some elites from those as well.

My new 2023 grown F2 plants between Joseph's promiscuous project and LA2329 produced no elites but there is variation for fruit size and degree of non-green color expression when ripe. I might actually be producing some seed with back crossing to habrochaites by not isolating that material. I've just been saving the F3 and F2 seed as a mix this year since I made the cross two years in a row in 2021 and 2022.

Unfortunately except for one new 25% cross my F1 Big Hill x LA2329 and F1 MMM x LA2329 have produced no seed. Presumably self incompatible and not compatible with each other as I isolated them from the promiscuous x LA2329. The 25% cross may segregate out some elites in 2025.

I do have a new F1 exserted orange x LA2329 sitting on my desk, picked yesterday. That will be my 2024 replacement for the Big Hill and MMM crosses.

I'm still very curious about habrochaites cross breeding and it takes a lot of space in my garden but is a very long term project. I think I am working both angles. 1. Trying to up the habrochaites percentage which I think may be very long term. 2. Trying to reduce the percentage to try to recover very palatable strains faster.

I think past works of Lee Goodwin and Joseph Lofthouse may aid in the first idea. By crossing them in instead of those with none we might get to a higher percentage faster. However, this also conflicts with other goals like getting what I think of as fancy traits into the mix such as stripes and blue skin. It is disheartening to see percentages drop way down with subsequent crossing.

The 50% habrochaites plants currently in my garden are huge and very habrochaites like in appearance both the F1 and F2 plants. Past plants from Josephs crosses were similar. Pure habrochaites plants can also be quite large. I think that if such plants could be bred to produce tasty tomatoes it could be quite an improvement in domestic tomato diversity.

Also just on another note, I wouldn't completely rule out low percentage wild hybrids as being significant. There was a paper which I found and shared awhile back- the wild introgressions are often actually quite large gene segments. When independent breeders without access to gene sequencing capabilities breed with wild species, somewhat regardless of pedigree, we don't really know how much of the wild we get unless there are specific visible observable traits we can track. Lee writes about fruits that drop on their own on at least one of his varieties. That is distinctly a wild species trait.

It would be interesting to work with researchers with those gene sequencing capabilities and see more about these lines. It could help to inform the utility of this hobby of crossing with the unpalatable wild species itself.

The tasty off shoot of the promiscuous tomato project I started from two plants in 2021 I called The One and Little Pumpkins have segregated and or crossed into at least four perhaps five distinct types. Red, yellow, Orange, and a cherry. Probably some are bicolors for a fifth. Many have a blue blush- though none what I think of as full strength blue. So possibly just say maybe the aft gene or one set or a similar gene from habrochaites doing some slight expression.

The red could probably be split into pink and red.

I've just sorted some keepers into blue red, blue orange,  blue bicolor?, cherry with a hint of blue, and a yellow.

Sharing a photo of what is likely an ripe F1 Promiscuous x LA2329 tomato. F2 seed is now fermenting. It shows some blue skin pigment that very much comes from LA2329.

So this year current tomatoes with some blue, in both orange and red variants have shown up in three of the gardens where I was growing in part promiscuous project plants. I thought the first and tastiest was a likely wrong seed getting in but I am reevaluating that. They just might be variation arising within or from natural crossing with the project.

So I just put a little more seed from three of them, one from each garden, in to ferment.

So, I planted some Wildling panamorous in pots in the middle of the summer, mostly to test their germination. I did not expect to get this nice stretch of sunny weather this late in the season, and I was able to get fruit to ripen in that short window. Good stuff.

A squirrel got to the big one before I could, but thankfully only took a mouthful and left the most of the fruit on the ground. I picked it up and took a picture before squeezing out all the seeds I could and starting to ferment them.

I don't remember the name of the pollen donor, though I could describe the fruit. They were red inside with pink skin, cherry/plum sized fruit that was sometimes lobate, and had a very savory, mildly sweet, red tomato flavor. Nothing spectacular, but it performed a darling this year.

Anyway, here's pictures.

I found that I couldn't post images on mobile. Turned out that I was just hitting quick reply.

I can't remember if I directly posted this fruit here.

This was a plant, from Exserted Tiger.

Well, a seed - that became a plant, however you say it.


The plant was putting out these oddly marked green fruits which eventually became red.


A family member crushed some plant which were already being harmed from the excess heat.


I stopped bothering with them after that.


The markings weren't variegation or markings that I've seen before.


I asked William here about them, he mentioned one parent.

I'd already checked on that parent.


This had the same coloration as Amurskij Tigr.



Unfortunately, I hadn't realized that the trait wasn't found in the entire population, and William didn't seem to have much hope that the trait had made its way over.


I figured at the time that other plants had the trait to a high extent and that I'd hopefully find an orange fruited one, which also had the markings.


Unfortunately the other one that I'm posting along with some other tomatoes. It's red.


I had to take cuttings and things when I moved again later in the year.


Some rotten tomatoes that I tossed could produce volunteers in certain areas, hopefully.

The Exserted Tiger fruit made me look into them, because they resembled Vintage Wine - but the variegation was different.

So. I'm a bit upset that I didn't realize that I could've had fun seeds right there. The plants were slightly Exserted as well.


Plate de Haiti, is another tomato with odd markings. Some yellow splotches on it.


That one, the Experimental Farm Network, says this about it:


"According to Roughwood's Dr. William Woys Weaver, this tomato was depicted in the 1561 Swiss herbal of Konrad Gessner, making it one of the oldest documented tomato varieties in the world."


So. That's neat. I'd say domesticated, as in Europeans or someone else domesticating them.


I'll try and see if I can't find volunteers next year.

I still have extra seed somewhere as well.

Exserted Tiger was sort of an interesting first find in my garden. It is a Blue Ambrosia x Amurski Tigr cross that I facilitated in 2017 and found the striped offspring of in 2019 in the F2. I haven't really been working on it in recent years so there isn't a better version of it. I finally made some crosses with it in 2023. It isn't however, to my mind, a part of Joseph's promiscuous tomato project though it was inspired by Joseph's writings. It doesn't contain any wild genetics. It is a subset of Lee Goodwin's Ambrosia line which originated with a Sungold F1 dehybridization which he then crossed to a blue skinned tomato from Oregon State.

I think better stripes are found in a lot of lines. I made a cross last year with Brad Gate's Brad's Atomic Grape, and with Purple Zebra F1. This year I also crossed with Tom Wagner's Muddy Waters. I think all three have better stripes than Amurski Tigr or Exserted Tiger. Not sure what genetics are at play exactly. I also managed to cross the Brad's Atomic Grape cross back to Exserted Tiger in 2023 as well as some other crosses though a few of them were with an individual that somehow managed to lose the striping.

Joseph had a "Wild Tiger" striped line some years ago. I had a hard time getting it started in my garden, but last year I got one going and saved quite a bit of seed. Not sure if it has any wild in it as it was before Joseph's more extensive wild crossings.

Europeans got perfectly domesticated, even extremely fancy heirloom tomatoes from indigenous peoples. One of the first ever painted was a yellow heirloom with those fancy deep ribs. A 1561 tomato could easily be an indigenous heirloom that had nothing done to it but be seed saved for less than 70 years by Europeans.

Yeah, that's why the 1561 tomato seems interesting to me.


Europeans wouldn't even touch tomatoes at first, save for some Germans and people who were familiar with edible nightshades.



I haven't seen anything like Vintage Wine or other fancy types segregate into something like Amurskij Tigr, so I'd assume it has some different form of variegation.


The fancy types from South America seem harder to find as time has gone on.

Purple Calabash is also supposed to be pretty old, and also seems to have a few odd traits (like, as I mentioned, the much shorter, stiffer trichomes on the seeds than most tomatoes, and a purple that seems more "integrated" than most purple tomatoes [as in all parts of the inside seem to be the same shade, as opposed to their being bits that are more green or more pink/red).

I don't know all that much about Red Calabash (I'm not sure I've even seen much mention of it outside of the Seeds of Change catalog) but that may also be fairly old. 

I have a maybe weird question...
William has shared about doing crossing blocks of tomatoes. Bees and insects are not completely reliable for tomatoes naturally crossing.

Would it make sense to try a crossing block and just slice the anther cones open on flowers? Instead of hand pollinating or emasculating. Just slice it open so insects could have better odds.

I didn't want to make a topic for what is probably just a one response answer lol.

Might work, might not. In 2017 I made my crosses by collecting pollen and dusting it on by hand to the most exserted varieties without emasculating. That might work just as well as slicing. You really just need one plant with extreme exsertion. I think extreme exsertion is important, modest or barely didn't seem to produce many crosses. That might also be the case with sliced open anther cones unless you shortened the anther cone but left the stigma normal- thus surgically creating an extreme exsertion. Might be easier just to daub pollen onto existing exsertion like I did.

Also, with time I have gotten better at making emasculated crosses. You may too, and if you are out in the garden cutting away at tomato flowers you might as well emasculate a bunch of them until skilled at it.

I'm going to have to become better at it in 2024.

I destroyed the first flower I attempted in 2023, and since I only had 1-2 plants of most varieties, I didn't want to risk it.

Next year I will be growing fewer varieties and more plants of each variety, so I can take the risk.

William, regarding The One, it sounds like you not stabilized it yet. Have you done a fairly large scale grow-out to see  if you can isolate the traits that made you give it that name initially?

Quote from: Cathy A on 2023-12-07, 01:31:14 PMWilliam, regarding The One, it sounds like you not stabilized it yet. Have you done a fairly large scale grow-out to see  if you can isolate the traits that made you give it that name initially?

Yes, I grew a large amount of it in 2022 and 2023. The current status is that it either segregated wildly and or crossed extensively. It is now many different things: red, yellow, bicolor, orange, beefsteak, cherry, with and without blue blush . My favorites are the orange with blue blush, the orange cherry with blue blush, and a successful new deliberate cross. Those three will probably take the old Exserted Orange isolation garden in 2024. I'll probably grow four seeds of each as transplants and then direct seed the rest. If the going to seed group wants more project seed I'll probably mix the rest and direct seed it in the west central garden but probably let promiscuous volunteers from the 2023 seeding there volunteer as well if they want to come back. I might also cross some of my favorite strains to LA2329 habrochaites. 

I would estimate based on 2023 traits like blue blush observed that it could have newly crossed in 2022 so could be another 6 years before stable but there could be strains in the mix that are say F4 or more. If it comes from the 2019 crosses it could be F6 or F7 but I doubt it was that straightforward.

I've been contemplating why some SI tomatoes from this project receive SC pollen. I still do not know, but I am considering the possibility that the mechanism in the style with is highly specific in rejecting self S-allele pollen may be active, and those plants showing this trait being homozygous for SI S-allele, i.e. not 50% SC. But that their mechanism for blocking SC is broken down. I don't even know if this is possible as I do not fully understand the SI and UI systems. Does this sound possible to anyone?

Why this doesn't make sense to me is that usually only dominant SC pollen can break through the SI barriers, something about S-Rnase. Hence SC pennellii and SC arcanum can do as they have dominant SC whereas lyc. has recessive SC. Something like that. These however receive recessive SC pollen. But I am struggling to hypothesise any other explanation. Anyone have any other hypotheses?

Could you fully tell the story of the SI individuals accepting the SC pollen from the beginning Justin? Start with what strain of Josephs promiscuous project and how you tested for SI and SC in case anyone wants to try to replicate your results. You probably told it before but it seems like there are missing details and the story is getting really interesting.

So with my The One sub strain of the promiscuous project. I was only able to make the cross with Mission Mountain tomatoes one way with The One as the female parent.

My hypothesis was that it was somehow a poor pollen producer. What if, it instead or in addition, has some partial SI mechanisms? Or is the same problem as what you have observed Justin?

I suppose there is an additional potential mechanism in there. The Mission Mountain tomatoes have the obvious blue skinned introgressions. We know that lots of such introgressions are surprisingly large. What if blue skinned tomatoes have something unintended?

There was, some years ago, someone who thought blue skinned tomatoes have an invasive form of pollen. Though the simpler explanation may simply be that the blue is a nice marker. It comes out half strength in the F1 and segregates nicely in the F2. Also if Justin's SC parent was not blue that would mean it likely isn't that.was your SC parent blue Justin?

I have an isolated patio where I grow a few extra tomatoes during the work week. For 2023 I had R18, The One, and Amethyst Cream. I didn't emasculate but no fruit was set until I daubed Amethyst Cream pollen on some stigmas of R18 and The One. I've wondered in previous years if R18 might have some SI mechanisms intact. In the main populations neither R18 or The One showed any signs of problems setting fruit. Also a past The One plant in the greenhouse in 2022 set fruit ok- though I got no crosses which I had hoped for.

It wouldn't stand to reason that SI is simple if these are real results. They could also simply be results in need of more crossing attempts. Not all hand crosses are successful. Though it does seem like it is easier with some variety mothers than. Others. Would have to tally crossing attempts. Very odd possibilities.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-07, 05:40:26 PMThe current status [of The One] is that it either segregated wildly and or crossed extensively. It is now many different things: red, yellow, bicolor, orange, beefsteak, cherry, with and without blue blush.

It sounds like it had much more heterozygosity than is typical in an F1 between two stable parents. Not surprising given the promiscuous ancestory.

Right now it is interesting breeding material, but not stable enough to grow on its own with any expectation of getting the specific traits that made you save its seeds separately.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:33:31 AMCould you fully tell the story of the SI individuals accepting the SC pollen from the beginning Justin? Start with what strain of Josephs promiscuous project and how you tested for SI and SC in case anyone wants to try to replicate your results.

I did not test in a fully systematic way. I'll say what I did to the best of my memory and then I'll recommend a better approach.

I had several 'elites' (those thought to be fully SI) and had several BH-NT, a population derived from the BH series and said to be SI. I had some wildings too, that were SC so won't mention them further.

The elites and BH-NT were outside. The BH in the peruvianum patch gave either no or almost no fruit, I forget which. A BH-NT that was a bit distant (2 metres?) from others produced almost no fruit, though did start producing some later in the season, which from memory may have coincided by an SC right next to it (put in rather late) coming into flower, its only direct neighbour. 2 BH-NT surrounded by domestics, hybrids, and elites, produced plenty of fruits. Combined, this supports the idea that they are SI. I was able to pollinate BH-NT plants with SC domestic pollen in controlled crosses, and use its pollen to pollinate SC plants.

One elite had small flowers and inserted stigma. It produced plenty of fruit. This suggests it was SC.

One elite had big showy flowers but inserted stigmas. It was surrounded by domestics, hybrids, and BH-NT. It gave plentiful pollen. It produced only 8 fruits, 5 of which I had emasculated and hand pollinated with SC pollen (recessive). This suggests that it is SI due to such low fruit setting which due to the ease of manual SC pollen pollination doesn't seem to be explainable with female sterility, and since I used its pollen to pollinate an SC plant, doesn't seem to be explainable with male sterility either. I would hypothesise that the 3 fruits it set without manual pollination may have been some lucky pollen from pollinators that managed to reach the stigma.

I might have tested one more elite that seemed worth crossing with, highly exserted stigma and small but delicious fruits, but I cannot remember for sure - if I did then it died of late blight before any crossed fruits could be harvested (it was the first to die from LB), which would mean I would not have recorded the crosses - I only recorded those with seeds I harvested. Too much going on, wish I had kept better records on that but unfortunately I did not. So I can't confirm whether I tried that one or not. I did not try others due to lacking the desired traits, exsertion in particular. I grew something like 4 or 5 of them, I would have liked to grow more but could not this year.

What I would recommend:
- Bag a flower cluster on each plant before any open.
- Vibrate some flowers when open and manually attempt self pollination. This tests for SI.
- Emasculate several flowers at the right time, and manually pollinate them with SC pollen.
- Obviously, label everything carefully!

This would best be done on 2 separate flower clusters to reduce the chance of those 2 types of pollen polluting each other. One could also use a mix of SC pollen from different varieties to increase the chances of the cross. One could also do normal emasculated crosses to a regular SC plant at the same time - if those and the main test fail, then the test should be discounted as may be due to environmental conditions. A negative result for the SI test and a positive result for the 'receiving SC pollen' are more definitive results than vice versa, but the control would help make the results more reliable and multiple tests on multiple days would also increase reliability. Even on one flower bunch that should be possible as they should open over the course of several days, so tests can be made day after day on the same cluster. Bags should only be opened while working - they are to protect from foreign pollen and pollinators. Indoor crosses would be even more reliable due to no wind and pollinators.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:33:31 AMSo with my The One sub strain of the promiscuous project. I was only able to make the cross with Mission Mountain tomatoes one way with The One as the female parent.

My hypothesis was that it was somehow a poor pollen producer. What if, it instead or in addition, has some partial SI mechanisms? Or is the same problem as what you have observed Justin?

Could you clarify which of those is or is thought to be SI?
With the BH-NT initially I had a really hard time getting pollen from them, and thought that might be why they appeared to be SI. But later I got pollen from them fine. Also if that were the cause I would think issues should show up in a whole plot of them, though I did not confirm exactly how they have been grown by those growing them. Plus, I switched from a small vibrator with a dying battery, to a tuning form, so my initial report of pollen being hard to extract might have been due to the vibrator.

Also the pollen coming from the showy flowered elite suggests lack of pollen is not the cause. And, if this behaviour is common, SI but receiving SC pollen, then I would think low pollen production should effect an entire population negatively with low fruit set. Though if it's only a portion of the population then that might not be apparent. I would not discount the possibility in all cases.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:33:31 AMWhat if, it instead or in addition, has some partial SI mechanisms? Or is the same problem as what you have observed Justin?

My thought expressed in my previous comment was indeed that I wonder if some SI mechanisms are in place, specifically those that make it reject self S-Rnase, but not mechanisms that make it reject SC pollen. I do not even know if that is possible though.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:33:31 AMThere was, some years ago, someone who thought blue skinned tomatoes have an invasive form of pollen.

What does 'invasive form of pollen' mean?

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:33:31 AMAlso if Justin's SC parent was not blue that would mean it likely isn't that.was your SC parent blue Justin?

The only antho I have in any fruits is in wild fruits. I have no domestic blues. BH-NT took pure lyc, che, and gal pollen, and SC hybrid pollen. The inserted showy elite I crossed only pure lyc to it.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:33:31 AMI have an isolated patio where I grow a few extra tomatoes during the work week. For 2023 I had R18, The One, and Amethyst Cream. I didn't emasculate but no fruit was set until I daubed Amethyst Cream pollen on some stigmas of R18 and The One.

If Amethyst Cream is SC then that implies those other 2 can receive SC pollen, right? And suggests the possibility that they might be SI, though could be explained by other things. Did Amethyst Cream set fruit while those 2 were not? If so that would weaken other explanations such as lack of wind/pollinators. Also of course results on one or a few plants doesn't mean we know definitively about the population as a whole. But it's all important info.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:33:31 AMNot all hand crosses are successful. Though it does seem like it is easier with some variety mothers than.

Yes I've been finding some domestics to be hard both ways, as male or female. Curious.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:33:31 AMIt wouldn't stand to reason that SI is simple if these are real results.

Certainly UI mechanisms are diverse. Due to observations, I conceptually view SI and UI separately, even though they overlap in nature. SI tomato species also have UI barriers, and they vary. I feel like what I am observing might be conceptualised as SI with broken down UI barriers.

There are S-RNase-dependent and S-RNase-independent mechanisms for pollen rejection. There are also HT proteins involved. I wonder if they might be involved in this issue. I have not had the time to study this topic properly yet, I have quite a backlog of work to get through. But here are some quotes from 'Restoring pistil-side self-incompatibility factors recapitulates an interspecific reproductive barrier between tomato species' -Alejandro Tovar‐M et al. - The Plant Journal - 2014

QuoteOur results show that introducing functional S-RNase and HT genes from green-fruited SI species into S. lycopersicum causes rejection of pollen from all four red-fruited tomato species (Figures 3–5 and Table 1). The common ancestor of the entire tomato clade was probably SI (Spooner et al., 2005; Igic et al., 2008), and therefore expressed a full complement of functional SI factors. Our gain-of-function experiment restored pistil-side functions lost in the transition to SC in the red-fruited group (Kondo et al., 2002a). Previous studies showed that S-RNase alone is not sufficient for self-pollen rejection in S. lycopersicum (Kondo et al., 2002b) and this is now understood on the basis of the requirement for both S-RNase and HT proteins.

QuoteThe requirement for both S-RNase and HT proteins suggests mechanistic similarity between S-RNase-dependent SI and UI, at least in terms of pistil-side function. However, it should be stressed that the two mechanisms are not identical. Crucially, SI is highly specific, and a given S-RNase only causes rejection of one S-haplotype, while the HT/S6 UI barrier operates at the species level and is inherently less specific. Because of this difference in specificity, we were able to recapitulate a UI barrier using genes from two SI species and testing for rejection of pollen from four redfruited species. This difference in specificity has also been observed in Nicotiana (Murfett et al., 1996; Beecher et al., 2001), and there may also be other differences between S-RNase-dependent SI and UI (Hancock et al., 2005).

Regarding actual aims, I think having SI plants which are not UI with domestics, is still very useful, if the aim is to have a high rate of outcrossing. For those SI plants it would still be 100% outcrossing! However I would worry about the possibility of the population tending towards SC via dilution. This is why I am interested in UI. And for me, SC UI and SI UI both seem appealing. An SC UI population would be protected from dilution and yet still be able to produce fruit with a single plant or just a few, as many might like to grow, And depending on flower structure, could still be predominantly outcrossing as a population. Whereas a single SI UI plant would be doomed by itself, in a group of 2 or 3 could set fruit so long as they didn't share the same S-alleles, but then the continuation would be highly problematic due to lack of diversity of S-alleles. So I think there are specific pros and cons to both. Both seem very valuable strategies. But for me, the UI trait seems rather important for both. I do understand that will not be the case for everyone however - some may be fine protecting from dilution via isolation plots, for example.

Very interesting. I'm hoping to bag flowers on all my Panamorous tomato project plants to check for SI/SC of each plant. Then track their traits. So I could save seed for a SI only line project, showy flowers, exserted stigmas, open anther. And a Panamorous line that is SC but also select for showy flowers, exserted stigmas, open anther. This would be easier to breed for specific desirable traits but also make crosses possible. I think it's kind of my version of how William is working on his exserted and prone to crossing tomatoes like exserted orange etc.

If I'm understanding this right, does that mean I should bag flowers early in the season and later in the season to test for SI?

Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2023-12-08, 11:31:11 AMVery interesting. I'm hoping to bag flowers on all my Panamorous tomato project plants to check for SI/SC of each plant.

Cool. Would be great if you could also test with SC pollen on them, maybe we can call that a UI test. Seems there may be 3 categories:
SC
SI + UI
SI but not UI

Also if you wanted to keep the lines separate, it would be ideal to harvest seeds from controlled crosses between parents known to belong to the same group, when it comes to the 2 SI groups, and either crosses between known SC parents, or selfed, for SC. Otherwise the divisions between groups may be different in the seeds compared to their parents.

Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2023-12-08, 11:31:11 AMIf I'm understanding this right, does that mean I should bag flowers early in the season and later in the season to test for SI?

I would think any time? Though if you are making controlled crosses for seed, then early would be more helpful so you then know what you want to cross with what. Bear in mind the tests depend on good pollination conditions and fruit setting, hence the option of using a known control plant. Crosses might fail due to temperature or time of day etc.

I'm hoping to make lots of hand cross pollinations so if something is failing all crosses that will show up.
I'm new to hand pollinating so we'll see how it goes. Hopefully at least some to get rolling and learning.

My idea was to bag flowers as they start showing up. Then I'll know which are SI or SC for hand crosses. Crossing the SI plants. And give me some time to make notes about the plants and flowers.

Justin you asked a question aways back about the potential for SI in R18 and The One. No more than most of the sub variants of the project I recieved from Joseph. A few years ago we were trying to look for signs of Self Incompatibility in all the project variants. R18 has spectacularly large flowers from the wild ancestors.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 06:25:40 PMJustin you asked a question aways back about the potential for SI in R18 and The One. No more than most of the sub variants of the project I recieved from Joseph. A few years ago we were trying to look for signs of Self Incompatibility in all the project variants. R18 has spectacularly large flowers from the wild ancestors.

Ah I see. I'm still working on writing/constructing my SI protocol and so busy today had no time to do anything on it. But just to say, from my very limited and inexperienced perspective, it would seem to me wise to look for special flower structure when making an SC population that tends towards outcrossing; but in my mind, if wanting to create an SI population, it would make sense to focus on making the whole population at least SC.SI (heterozygous SI) and as quickly as possible SI.SI (homozygous SI). I would think it appropriate to select for flower structure after that. Flowers no good for SI would anyway be self-selected out as females if inserted and to some extent as males if not showy enough, perhaps. But one thing about showy flowers that occurred to me at least in my specific location, was that my BH-NT flowers and quite a few of my lycs, had much showier flowers than the per and even more so my chm, to my human perspective at least, and yet I saw so much bee activity on the per and chm, way way more than I noticed on the BH-NT or lyc.

So that makes me think, perhaps just let the pollinators select the flower traits? One thing I also wondered was about flower colour - I wonder, if we could see like the bees do, if the colour of outcrossing or largely outcrossing wild species might be different to lyc. I notice they stain my fingers yellow seemingly much more when I crush them, for example. If I wanted to select them artificially for promiscuity, I might look into that further and see maybe even if there's a camera that can see more clearly the flowers the pollinators like, or a special light one could shine on them or something like that, so I could select them.

Also I don't know if the pollinators build a memory of individual plants or areas of plants, but I wonder if they get to remember which produce more pollen. Pers produce a lot of pollen! Then, my per also have many flowers, quite close together. I don't know if that's a factor or not, in their attractiveness, perhaps so, perhaps not? Chm seemed to have fewer flowers so wouldn't seem to be a factor though I cant judge them so easily since they were in the per patch. But, perhaps that could be another trait to focus if wanting more pollinators? The multiflora plants, perhaps they're good for that!

One reason I would think to select first devotedly for SI.SI is perhaps impatience. But another reason is because ... well it's in 2 parts, 1 because of not wanting the population to become dilute, which theoretically it should not do anyway if I start with only SC.SI (though maybe not in practice); the other part is that I would worry that the longer I might take to make the population SI.SI, perhaps the more chance there is that mutations or loss through crossing or whatever, occur, and make this SI but not UI phenomenon. So, this is why I'd focus on this trait first, but also why I would test them with SC pollen, to select against the lack of UI. Basically, if SI+UI were only due to the S-allele, this would not be necessary. But since it seems to involve an unknown number of multiple genes, testing the phenotype seems important. So I would think it safer to select for other traits once that SI+UI system is properly in place, or if one has enough plants to do both at once, I would think at least to make the SI-UI traits (via specific crossing behaviour rather than flower structure) the priority. 

I actually find this possibility that part of the mechanisms which make obligate outcrossing happen in Solanum habrochaites could potentially have transferred over in Joseph's broader populations very hopeful and interesting. I haven't been so focused on this SI idea in recent years as Joseph has. I think I thought Joseph would succeed eventually and then send me some seed! He still may- or maybe has already! One reason I haven't been so focused on that, is that the crosses Alan Kapuler wrote of so eloquently have been really quite plentiful in my garden. I have lots of saved packets of naturally crossed tomatoes and their descendants- in fact, most of my tomatoes are liable to now be descendants of a natural type cross like the ones that led to Exserted Tiger and Mission Mountain Sunrise back in 2017 and now I have made innumerable crosses descended from Mission Mountain Sunrise. So if my blue skinned tomatoes have, as I think they have, crossed with the promiscuous project tomatoes with natural crosses, even if that represents a dilution of the wild genes, I am still pretty excited about it. I can always add more wild genes into the mix.

I did try to start with tomatoes that already had exserted style and stigma flowers with my LA2329 project. I also tried to start with promiscuous project tomatoes crossed with Big Hill. I specifically selected bicolors with exserted flowers to grow the seeds that I grew to make my crosses with LA2329. So those promiscuous x LA2329 crosses are 5/8 wild or 9/16 habrochaites since they are 1/16th penellii. I am not sure if that extra eighth matters much or not though! It may very well also not have stayed that percentage as it would kind of make sense that the pure LA2329 continue to provide pollen to the hybrids which means that some of those seeds could be 7/8 wild now and also that they could be pollinating the LA2329 now- though I would like to do those crosses deliberately, so I am sure of it! I am not sure if I can tell a 1/2 habrochaites from a 7/8 habrochaites they would both be mostly wild type. I am pretty sure that of all the populations in my garden, that at least some of the LA2329 and 50% descendants are still SI. Joseph has now made a very high percentage habrochaites tomato with some domestic fruit traits that he has shared a little about. If you could get an extremely robust habrochaites to produce delicious tomatoes that would be quite the fancy trick! I've intended to dilute in both directions, and I am getting there. If I get palatable tomatoes back, but without the arthropod resistance traits, I will simply cross them back with LA2329 and try again. I think the same might be a valid approach for searching for SI domestic tomatoes. If a population proves to have some but not all of the necessary traits- might be good to cross back with the wild species.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 07:45:08 PMJoseph has now made a very high percentage habrochaites tomato with some domestic fruit traits that he has shared a little about. If you could get an extremely robust habrochaites to produce delicious tomatoes that would be quite the fancy trick!

Sounds cool! Any idea how many unique S-alleles it has? And, has it been grown in an area with heavy late blight? Sounds like a good route to getting excellent LB resistance.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 07:45:08 PMIf I get palatable tomatoes back, but without the arthropod resistance traits, I will simply cross them back with LA2329 and try again.

Sounds like a nice idea!

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2023-12-08, 07:45:08 PMIf a population proves to have some but not all of the necessary traits- might be good to cross back with the wild species.

Yeah that sounds like a viable route. Though, if it were possible to select out the undesired phenotype from the population without undoing some of the desirable fruit quality, that sounds like a maybe preferable route to me? I guess might depend on how big the population is, and how many years one would be willing to wait?

I think I am in this tomato breeding thing for the long haul, however long that is. It would be nice to get to the point where I can say release a finished tomato variety each year like Lee Goodwin does. I think it's important to work with a nice mix of short term and long-term projects so that some success is had each year. I definitely have relegated SI to the long-term category in recent years. Though sometimes that categorization as long-term isn't really warranted, and I am happy to be disproven.

I don't know much about Joseph's more advanced populations for his SI project other than the occasional update he does. Maybe he'll have an another update sometime.

I think I'm so engaged in my own LA2329 project now that I am most likely to come upon useful things with SI from it. I have tried to keep it with a wide genetic base so hopefully it has plenty of S alleles still at the higher habrochaites percentages. There were difficulties though with a lot of plants of LA2329 only producing flowers and no fruit. If I had to, I could cross in a different habrochaites accession like Neandermato, but I hope that doesn't become necessary as it might also dilute the potential of getting arthropod resistance.

Bee facilitated back crossing occurred by isolating individual plants of Solanum habrochaites in fields with (lycopersicon/habrochaites and lycopersicon/pennellii)

2016 Original LA1777
solanum-habrochaites-fruits-high-res.jpg

2017-2019 Selection in back crossed population for subtle morphology differences in stems, leaves, and hairs. Some fruits with 3 locules, and the slightest hint of yellow when super ripe. This photo exaggerates the very subtle yellow coloration.
habrochaites-BC1-3 locules_640.jpg

2020 Selection for 3 locules and larger fruits (BC1 is the name of the population, not a scientific designation). Color calibration cards really help to keep the colors honest.
BC-2020.jpg

2022 selection for larger fruits
backcross.jpeg

2023 selection for yellow/orange fruits and good flavor (I estimate these are 90% habrochaites. Most of the population produced green fruits.)
habrochaites-20231024_151527.jpg

The very first year 2020 I grew LA2329 it grew near enough to Josephs BC1 that it could have crossed easily. Though if memory serves only two plants produced fruit that year. Though also the 25% wild but morphologically wild plants were close also. It would be fun to grow out enough individuals of 100%? LA2329 to see if morphological variation has crept in from that and subsequent encounters including its own hybrid offspring. My F2 50% plants from promiscuous x LA2329  had a few clusters of much larger fruits but no signs of color.

My single productive F1 25% LA2329 had tiny fruits but about the same yellow/orange color as Joseph found in 2023 at 90% wild. One very interesting possibility is if that particular plant turns out to have crossed with the 50% habrochaites plants next to it.

Edit: I bet I still have seed for 2020 BC1 it would be interesting to grow and look for the extreme hairiness of LA2329 to see if the natural cross went the other way also.

If 2023 is the first time its shown this well. I would expect the colored fruit to largely skip the next generation like the reversion to wild type we saw in Fairy Hollow back in 2019.  However with a greater frequency of recurrence.

The domestication of habrochaites for bigger/better fruits are really an interesting way. We could certainly use that in Europe as fundation of population against the nasty blights we have.

Will this work be available through EFN this year ? :)

It's so exciting to see your progress on the habrochaites with domestic traits!

I get:

 SI = Self Incompatible
 SC = Self Compatible

But what is UI?

Kadence,

I'm going to have to attempt far more crosses in 2024 than I really need. I'm sure I will botch many of them.

2023 in my garden was all about trials. 2024 will be all about crossing.

I will be interested to see what the bicolor line that I isolated from Wildling Panamorous will do and what crossing it with SC varieties will produce.

Quote from: Cathy A on 2023-12-09, 06:47:27 AMSI = Self Incompatible
 SC = Self Compatible

But what is UI?

Unilateral incompatibility. So, some SI species can't cross with each other, because they have incompatibility mechanisms other than the S-allele mechanism. And some SC species have incompatibility mechanisms too, such as chmielewskii can pollinate lyc, che and gal, but they can't pollinate it - that's UI, only crosses in one direction. SC pennellii is same, can cross to lyc che and gal, and also to per, but not other way around. Perhaps some SI species can only cross in one direction with each other too, I'm not sure.

So some SI species, like hab or SI accessions of pen, can pollinate lyc (and gal and che) but it doesn't work the other way around. So they are SI, and also UI. In most cases, SC cannot pollinate SI. The famous exceptions are dominant SC like SC pen and SC arc. The unusual exception that it seems only I have noticed, is recessive SC pollinating apparently (at least some of the) SI domestic tomatoes in Joseph's project.

The high percentage hab population looks like it's going great! I really look forward to seeing them grown in areas of heavy late blight!

There were only two plants with orange fruits this year, and maybe 50 seeds total, so I won't be sending seeds to Experimental Farm Network this year. Most of the seeds got pollinated with green-fruited varieties, so it may take a couple years to get a stable orange fruited habrochaites. Wishing that I would have made clones this fall, then I could have tried to cross them this winter.

I grew LA2329 two years in a row in the patch with my BC habrochaites. It's very likely that it's genetics combined with the BC population.

Quote from: Joseph Lofthouse on 2023-12-09, 05:48:19 PMI grew LA2329 two years in a row in the patch with my BC habrochaites. It's very likely that it's genetics combined with the BC population.

Nice! The seed I sent you of LA2329 was harvested from that plant that was close to the BC1 you sent me so it had three years of potential interaction. Did the LA2329 change notably? Or did it stay its fuzzy and strong smelling self? Do any of the current BC1 have the strong smell or intense fuzz? The 50% LA2329 50% promiscuous population showed a lot of fruit size variation in the F2 in 2023, no color variation yet. I haven't noticed anything yet in the LA2329 cytoplasm population yet, but do wish I had separated them better in 2023. They kind of mixed in so that 2023 seed lot is mixed cytoplasm potentially. I would like to do a bigger grow out of The LA2329 cytoplasm material for 2024 but I don't anticipate having enough seedling starting space to do so. I can maybe grow a huge grow out of The 50% material and the 25% material as those I could probably direct seed.

The growing season got away from me this year. I think that I didn't photograph the BC plants this year, so I can't tell what happened to LA2329.

Quote from: Joseph Lofthouse on 2023-12-09, 06:55:03 PMThe growing season got away from me this year. I think that I didn't photograph the BC plants this year, so I can't tell what happened to LA2329.

That is ok. I really struggle sometimes to keep up with my garden. There are a lot of tasks I would like to do like search for type IV trichomes and bag blossoms to get a sense of SI and SC status that don't always get done. Definitely a curiosity though. It's possible even that the accessions involved just don't cross with each other for some reason. Also possible that they've already deeply crossed. I definitely crossed promiscuous bicolors with LA2329 in both 2021 and 2022 though! I might again in 2024 to get the orange blue blushed strains of The One descendants into the mix.

I have a couple of additional accessions of Solanum habrochaites LA 1033 and one that might be cold tolerant. A cool way to go with those projects would be to cross with a more SI strain or this BC1 derived domesticated habrochaites strain. Also just a thought in general, that once we have a domesticated habrochaites, and it seems you do!- working with habrochaites accessions might just be a lot easier.

In many ways habrochaites is a better plant.

What's the seed size like in the yellow fruited habrochaites? Same as the fully wild seeds, or, larger?

And how do people feel about the idea of domesticated tomatoes with seeds that are wild-sized? I was thinking for cherry tomatoes that could be a good thing for the eating experience, but the drawback is the seedling stage, small energy reserve in small seed. I'd be interested how growers would feel about it. This thought was inspired by eating some tasty cheesmaniae/pimp hybrids - the tiny seed size was appreciated, and this makes sense to me in small fruits where the seed:flesh ratio is so high compared to large tomatoes.

Seeds retained the small wild phenotype. Color of the seeds shifted towards yellow.

The pollen donors for yellow fruits included descendants of interspecies crosses with habrochaites and pennellii.

IMG_7444.JPG

I wrote before about experiencing some tomatoes in this project being self incompatible yet being able to receive self compatible pollen. I thought about that some more recently and thought that it's important to consider the stage of flower development. I don't remember for sure but 99% sure I must have emasculated those flowers and crossed them in the normal manner, when the petals were yellow but just before opening. Bearing this in mind, it could potentially be possible that they only were able to be pollinated by (recessive) self compatible pollen because of being immature, and that this would not necessarily mean that the mature open flowers could be pollinated by the same pollen.

In my own current project, I actually applied these thoughts over the last several days, seeing if I could pollinate some of my F2 [is 'F2' the right term for the offspring of F1 sibling crosses?] self incompatible hybrids (some of which should be only heterozygous for SI S-alleles) with regular lycopersicum pollen. I have not had time to keep up with documentation, but I just inspected some of the labels from failed cross attempts. I count 3 from 1 plant, 2 from another, 1 from another. That might actually be all that I tried - I will update if any actually worked but my expectation is that this means all failed. The one I tried 3 on, they were of varying maturity on the same flower cluster, one with yellow petals, one white, one green. The one with 2, I think one was yellow, one white. I did varying stages because it might be necessary to do them earlier than usual to get around the SI barrier, and I have had some success with this on peruvianum.

All crosses having failed, this could mean that the mechanisms from the S-allele were already active, or, some other barriers. In a way it's a good sign as it shows strong barriers in my current population, although it could have been convenient had it worked, since I have a lot more SI flowers than I do lycopersicum flowers right now! And I was hoping the former would make better mothers for seed production also. But I think it's a good result anyway.

It doesn't really clarify the situation regarding the odd behaviour under discussion. And it does not rule out the possibility that the phenomenon I observed previously was due to getting around post flower-opening SI barriers by pollinating unopened flowers. But after consideration, I would say that if anyone did want to run tests for SI plants, instead of testing them with SC pollen after emasculation, I would say only do that if you also test them their own pollen after emasculation, on separate flowers - only a positive result with SC and negative with self pollen, would demonstrate this anomolous behaviour. Though the ideal test I think would be to bag flowers before opening, then run both test, no need for emasculation. That way, you're testing the behaviour of the flowers under natural conditions and will be able to ascertain if they are SI, and if they would be able to receive SC pollen via natural pollination or not.

https://goingtoseed.org/products/copy-of-tomato

Grew some of these for this project!

Project update for 2024 growing season

I stopped working on the Q-series of tomatoes. Those were tomatoes that descended from this project. They have orange fruits about 4 to 8 ounce fruits. Often determinate vines, and lovely flavor. Flowers tend towards inbreeding types, so I stopped work on this family, and all other families without the self-incompatible trait.

I have a population (SI x SI) that acts fully self-incompatible. I shared that population with a number of growers across the country. They are trialing for disease resistance, and selecting for promiscuous flower types, and hopefully flavor. Hoping to generate lots of seed to share with others next winter. Thankful to Anna Mieritz for facilitating the grow outs.

I have a population that is a 4-species hybrid (pimpinelifolium, lycopersicon, habrochaites, pennellii). One plant last year acted self-incompatible and had open flowers. I intend to grow a population of that. Also growing its siblings that had amazing flavors. I shared seed of this clade with Experimental Farm Network as Hummingbird tomato.

Two plants from the SunSugar X SI cross acted self-incompatible last summer. I intend to grow those out. One of them tasted like tangerine.

Those three populations will be grown close together so that they can share pollen.

There were a couple of plants with astonishing flavors from the pimpinelifolium and SunSugar crosses that I intend to grow for seed to share, even though their flower types may not meet project goals.

I intend to grow out the population which I believe to be 90% habrochaites, and that had orange fruits last summer. They were pollinated by green fruited plants, so going to try to do early selection. I'll grow them isolated from the orange/yellow fruited elite varieties of self-incompatible tomatoes.

Then there are seeds from one habrochaites plant, grown in isolation, which may have been pollinated by peruvianum, pennellii, or wildling. 

That is an excellent and intriguing update Joseph.

I am most intrigued to grow the deliberate cross and the probable natural cross segregates of the good flavored segregate I called "The One". Especially the ones that I marked as half strength anthocyanin.

I got some blossom bags like the ones my wife uses for her cut flower seed growing and I hope to use them to investigate self incompatibility in my likely mixed compatibility LA2329 hybrid populations. I may direct seed some of the accumulated 50% LA2329 hybrid seed from that project.

I hope that others will carry the Q-series forward as Joseph focuses on SI lines.

I plan to grow a bed of Q-series this year, in the hope that I will get some good fruity and orange tomatoes. If so, I will save all the orange and fruity seeds that I can.

Wildling Panamorous was a disappointment last year, as all the fruit was red and non-fruity, just the opposite of what Joseph had selected for earlier. Either someone growing it in the chain between Joseph, EFN, and myself re-selected for red lycopene-flavored fruit, or there is strong genetic drift pushing in that direction.

I look forward to tasting some of the fruity tomatoes this year, and attempting crosses with other varieties with desirable traits.

I planted 198 tomatoes. Of that 20 are wilds and 65 are Promiscuous project lines. I intend to continue with lines from these. My interests aren't especially with SI lines but I plan to screen for them by bagging and buzzing flowers to see if they self. I'd like to send the bulk of the SI seed to people who are doing more work with them and I'd just keep some back up for it. I'm more interested in the exsertion, showy flowers, and raising the likelihood of natural crosses than being strictly SI.

Hmm it does seem weird that the Wildling Panamorous would produce all red fruit and quite domestic tomatoes. My packet is from this last EFN update and says 12/2022 for germination test. Probably the same lot of seed I'd think. Have to see what I get. I started 20. How many did you grow last year? Curious the sample size you had.

I'm going to make a post on my tomato plans but this seems best here...
Would it be useful for someone to reinvent the wheel? To take what has been learned and start from scratch with their own promiscuous project of wild crosses? The project is built primarily from crosses with Big Hill it seems. One could start with different domestic tomatoes to bring in different traits. I really enjoy the way Joseph gardens and landraces but I'm curious to see what else could be learned by starting from scratch and doing some more record keeping and hand pollinations.

Actually Joseph didn't cross big Hill in until about 2019. Before that it was all red tomatoes and those red genetics are hard to get rid of. Joseph likely never advertised that line as red free. It just predates his declarations that he is going to work to eliminate red tomatoes from his garden.

I avoided red with my LA2329 project until last year when I crossed in exserted tiger. It has a lot of exserted genetics from Big Hill and now exserted orange and exserted tiger. The latter of which brings in red but it is a minor concern to me compared to the habrochaites flavor. Many red tomatoes taste good to me my tongue I suspect isn't as capable as Joseph's. So red flesh and blue skin are allowed in my garden.

I continuously attempt to reinvent the wheel.

I have a line with orange fruits and habrochaites cytoplasm.

I have lines that are half pimpinelifolium.

I have a line that is half SunSugar.

Hmm. I have a line, that I wasn't planning on planting, from a couple summers ago, that is a bee made cross that would be equivalent to the state of this project 10 generations ago.

I have other lines, and I keep making more crosses when suitable parents flower at the same time. I'm still keeping very few records. My work could have benefited from more records, and especially from attempting self-pollination.

In all lines, I select heavily against red fruits, cause I think lycopene tastes terrible.

Oh Interesting! Clearly I missed some things (or forgot them) between the threads over time. And probably lots of the minutia that wasn't posted about, well because it's minutia. And progress is more fun to post about, understandably.

Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2024-03-15, 03:48:02 PMHmm it does seem weird that the Wildling Panamorous would produce all red fruit and quite domestic tomatoes.

I can say that I had one Wilding that had red fruit but tasted way better than the pure lycopersicum I grew. So maybe don't be too put off by the red colour. Though I don't really understand the dislike of red tomatoes - I love red tomatoes and the only orange/yellow lycopersicum I grew last year tasted very bland to me. Well, I did also grow Exserted Orange but didn't get to eat any since it died from late blight very quickly, unfortunately. I'm open to orange being good, but I love good red tomatoes.

Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2024-03-15, 03:48:02 PMWould it be useful for someone to reinvent the wheel? To take what has been learned and start from scratch with their own promiscuous project of wild crosses? The project is built primarily from crosses with Big Hill it seems. One could start with different domestic tomatoes to bring in different traits. I really enjoy the way Joseph gardens and landraces but I'm curious to see what else could be learned by starting from scratch and doing some more record keeping and hand pollinations.

You could also start with different SI wild species. I'm in the process of making an SI population using S. arcanum as the source of SI. I'm using S. chmielewskii for a unilateral incompatible population. You could use S. pennellii as an SI source, or S. habrochaites, or perhaps another species if you use more difficult methods. I think integrating late blight resistance would be particularly useful - I'm also working on that in various ways for those populations. Starting with a huge but healthy lycopersicum and a population of habrochaites LA1777 could be an excellent way of working towards an SI population with high late blight resistance, for example, though if you are in a short season environment, you might want to do that in a greenhouse to make sure you get ripe fruits from the crosses. 

Quote from: Justin Jardinier on 2024-03-15, 07:17:48 PMThough I don't really understand the dislike of red tomatoes

I think some are selecting away from red tomatoes because it's what Joseph is selecting, for seed that goes back and forth to further it. And some just personal preferences.

Quote from: Justin Jardinier on 2024-03-15, 07:17:48 PMYou could also start with different SI wild species.

I have Cache valley currant, Neandermato, and Improved Galapagos to work with. I have too many ideas to play with already to try adding growing more wilds to it. Plus I'm not really set on working with specifically SI tomatoes. I hope to pass on SI seed to others who are doing more work with that.

I do hope to utilize the wilds I do have. I'm curious to see where that takes me.

Justin,

I don't have a problem with red tomatoes. Most of the tomatoes I grow are red and lycopene flavored.

However, I grew the wildling specifically because I was excited about the idea of fruity tomatoes that had traits well outside the norm for domestic tomatoes. And I just didn't see that in the seed I had.

Kadence,

I don't have room to grow tomatoes (or anything else) on the scale that William and Joseph can. Still, I grew 2/3 of a 4x4 ft bed tightly packed with wildling, but didn't make an accurate count.

Maybe a dozen plants, give or take?

Not enough to guarantee seeing the full diversity available in the line, but enough that I should have had at least one fruity-flavored non-red plant unless those genetics were quite rare in the sample that I had.

I will be interested to hear from other wildling growers what traits they see and in roughly what % of the population .

Joseph,

Thank you so much for starting the Beautifully Promiscuous and Tasty Tomato Project. There are many different ways that breeders can take these genetic lines, and I know you can't pursue them all yourself. It gives all of a new base on which to breed tomorrow's tomatoes!

Quote from: Cathy A on 2024-03-16, 06:31:52 AMHowever, I grew the wildling specifically because I was excited about the idea of fruity tomatoes that had traits well outside the norm for domestic tomatoes. And I just didn't see that in the seed I had.

Ah I see what you mean. I think you might be seeing that soon, some of Joseph's elites really seem to fit that criteria! Very tasty, not red, and very unusual. Size increase and disease resistance would be the next steps for that I think, but taste is definitely there in the ones I experienced. Perhaps it's there among the Wildings too but might require larger growouts? And perhaps some disease resistance is there hiding in both, if we can find it. Large growouts in areas with heavy late blight pressure would be awesome. I am guessing the elites have more chance of that.

By the way I have seen tomatoes that start orange but turn red, among the Wildings and Q series. Maybe packing them tighter even if it means only very few fruits from each, could be a good way to explore the diversity quicker? (What does one call such a tomato - red because it ends up red?)

Have you grown Neandermato before, or will this be the first year?

I'm more interested in selecting from the Neandermato line than from crossing it into domestics, but this will be my first year to try it on a small scale. My goals may change once I see and taste it. It may benefit from a limited infusion of genetic material from larger, sweeter tomatoes, or not.

I didn't see signs of diseases resistance in the limited amount of wildling that I grew. 2023 was a very bad disease year for me, so that would have been the time to spot it.

A larger grow out might have found some, but for me, the Dwarf Eagle Smiley proved more resistant than any of the wildling.

Quote from: Cathy A on 2024-03-17, 06:03:03 AMselecting from the Neandermato line than from crossing it into domestics, but this will be my first year to try it on a small scale. My goals may change once I see and taste it.

Neandermato is Joseph's population of Solanum habrochaites. It's not edible. I don't think you will be wanting to eat the fruits. Also you can't pollinate habrochaites (except some rare self compatible accessions apparently) with lycopersicum pollen, so "a limited infusion of genetic material from larger, sweeter tomatoes" isn't too easy to do - I guess to do that you'd need to use the habrochaites pollen on lycopersicum to get 50%, then cross that again with hab pollen to get 75% and maybe by that point you could use the pollen to pollinate habrochaites? I don't really know, but what I mean is, I think it's pretty hard to add a little lycopersicum to a habrochaites population and I would assume it would take at least several generations.

Yeah I have some seed still for some of Joseph's back cross lines where he perhaps infused some domestic into his Neandermato line of habrochaites from about 2020 which he called BC1. Mine seemed wild type. It took him until 2023 to get a few plants with colored fruit in his putative 90% hab line.

With my LA2329 hab accession project I've been meaning to pursue both directions and may have inadvertently with bee crosses. I probably haven't been giving it enough space. 50% hab population I now have enough seed I should probably direct seed a row and let natural selection start truly adapting it to my growing season at least. Otherwise I can't start enough plants of it right now with resources at hand to get to the large population size I need to start finding elites at that percentage.

In 2019 I grew about 13 F1 seedlings of Joseph's back cross to Big Hill HX-9 so only about 25% wild 12.5% hab and 12.5% penellii None of the plants were elite all wild type. I saved every seed and direct seeded a huge population row in 2020. Their were a few semi elites but Joseph had already sent me the elite seed he found in 2019 and over the winter from the winter grow out in CA and it was so much better I didn't save the seed.

I am just a little bit ahead of where I was in the fall of 2019 with Josephs line with my 2022 new 25% line from LA2329 because the one plant that survived to fruit in 2023 just happened to have some color. So I might snag an elite line for palatibility in 2024. Though I would be shocked if it happened to have the type IV trichomes or chemistry that protects LA2329 from arthropods. For that I'll probably need to make another cross. I also went ahead and made some 12.5% wild crosses.

So Joseph's 90% hab colored line is quite an achievement that required some serious time, effort, and garden space!

Quote from: Cathy A on 2024-03-17, 06:08:00 AMI didn't see signs of diseases resistance in the limited amount of wildling that I grew. 2023 was a very bad disease year for me, so that would have been the time to spot it.

A larger grow out might have found some, but for me, the Dwarf Eagle Smiley proved more resistant than any of the wildling.

Dwarf Eagle Smiley is 50% current tomato. That can confer a lot of very practical resistance without sacrificing as much flavor potential as a cross with the unpalatable species. I made a cross with it and one of my current crosses that will also be 50% current tomato. Curious how that will segregate.

I really like my hab project but the pimp projects are nice immediate gratification projects. I'm glad I'm doing both. It occurs to me that it might matter more where these projects segregate than what wild species they are crossed with for resistances to common diseases in more disease prone areas. I don't need any particular resistance so if I let my wild species crosses segregate for 7 years while selecting for best flavor the odds of resistance will be low even if I started with something great.

Justin,

My hope was to practice selection on Neandermato for several generations to see if something edible could be produced. My understanding (possibly wrong) is that a small amount of domestic tomato genes had already been introduced.

I was thinking of growing 8-12 plants and seeing if there is enough segregation to select plants with larger or more palatable fruits.

If it's not at all edible and cannot accept pollen from domestics, then I will grow only a tiny amount of it (perhaps 3 plants) to pollinate selected domestics.

Quote from: Cathy A on 2024-03-17, 10:49:07 AMJustin,

My hope was to practice selection on Neandermato for several generations to see if something edible could be produced. My understanding (possibly wrong) is that a small amount of domestic tomato genes had already been introduced.

I was thinking of growing 8-12 plants and seeing if there is enough segregation to select plants with larger or more palatable fruits.

If it's not at all edible and cannot accept pollen from domestics, then I will grow only a tiny amounts of it (perhaps 3 plants) to pollinate selected domestics.

I would treat it as the latter. Joseph may now have a population that the former could work on but it needs seed increased and stabilized before he has enough to share. I would expect any introgression in the currently available neandermato to be more of the hey this is still wild type but with three locules sort.

If I was trying that with Neandermato I would try to grow 1000 plants and the special BC1 seeds Joseph sent me and that I seed saved.

Quote from: Cathy A on 2024-03-16, 06:31:52 AMMaybe a dozen plants, give or take?

I went back and checked my notes. I had 20 wildling plants.

Thanks for the update, William. I will grow a small amount of Neandermato and use it as a pollen source for crossing.

If a wild line of any of the non-S. lyco species becomes available for moderately large-scale growout and selection, I would be interested in participating. I can't grow anything like 1,000 plants, but it's the sum of plants grown by all project participants that matters.



BTW, at one point you were actively working on Little Pumpkin, but you haven't mentioned it for some time. Are you still growing and selecting LP?

Quote from: Cathy A on 2024-03-17, 11:59:44 AMThanks for the update, William. I will grow a small amount of Neandermato and use it as a pollen source for crossing.

If a wild line of any of the non-S. lyco species becomes available for moderately large-scale growout and selection, I would be interested in participating. I can't grow anything like 1,000 plants, but it's the sum of plants grown by all project participants that matters.



BTW, at one point you were actively working on Little Pumpkin, but you haven't mentioned it for some time. Are you still growing and selecting LP?

Moving this back to the proper thread. So we aren't mucking up Kadence's thread.

Little pumpkins, if it survived, got merged with The One. In recognizable form it died out for lack of seed production. That is like a lot of early generation habrochaites crosses it had low reproductive viability. This could be a part of why The One is now such a segregating mess.

Quote from: Cathy A on 2024-03-17, 11:32:20 AMI went back and checked my notes. I had 20 wildling plants.

Ah. We'll see then what mine do. I have 20 planted for starts and so far 10 are up. (Seeded 3/10 in the evening and it's now 3/17 afternoon)

Ok, so this is the result of saving seed from something odd that showed up. Two potato leaf dwarfs one with red blue skin fruit and modest stigma exsertion just showed up last year in what was supposed to be my growout of Joseph's promiscuous project. I saved the seed separately as this seemed like maybe contamination. Definitely at least some cross with my tomatoes to bring in anthocyanin skin. So it has three potato leaf one that looks non dwarf and three regular leaf one of which looks dwarf. It may just be too young to tell which are dwarf but if so not the expected outcomes for segregation alone. Still at least a 50% outcrossing rate based on regular leaf seedlings and way too small a sample size. Fun and weird. Like a hoped for outcome a generation sooner than expected in an unexpected population. Evidence of natural tomato crossing in my garden and the efficacy of Joseph's project. Maybe will try to find a spot to direct seed the rest of the saved seed. Kind of a fun outcome. I split it into three pots. Left the two shortest potato leaf in the original and put the tall potato leaf in its own and the three regular leaf ones together.

I planted out the promiscuous tomatoes today.

My 2024 grow out of the descendants of "The One" is blooming and is a very nice mix of exserted stigmas, inserted stigmas, potato leaves, and regular leaves. I also notice some are rugose dwarfs. The potato leaves tell me that MMS and MMM are likely pollen parents and that last year's variation likely represented a lot of new F1 crosses. I selected several tasty orange blue individuals as the parents of this year's growout.

The 2024 The One descendents which are probably The One x MM F2 are still looking really interesting. Exserted stigmas. Decently long tresses. Several leaf types, degrees of fuzziness. Interesting considering I selected it, allowed it to outcross, and re-selected it last year. No signs of blue skin yet in the fruits that have formed. Last year's selections were orange + blue skin in cherry and regular. I also have two plants I'm pretty sure are direct seeded The One x MM

For 2025 I am really excited about growing out the seed from the potato leaf antho yellow dwarfs I found amongst the 2024 descendants of The One. It will be quite interesting to see how many regular leaf and non-dwarf seedlings appear as that will give out crossing rate- though a few PL dwarfs could arise from crossing with relatives where those traits are still in recession.

I am also very excited to grow a packet of seed from a red fruited mother that is from an obligately outcrossing branch of the project. It also occurs to me that if the potato leaf dwarves appear to still have a high outcrossing rate that planting them together might be interesting. Which could potentially be three gardens worth of tomatoes.

The obligate outcrossing tomatoes would be very interesting to cross back to Solanum habrochaites- theoretically perhaps easier to work with in that regard because they should already have some of the Solanum habrochaites traits of importance. I've tried that with my LA2329 x Promiscuous cross in the past- so this would just be the same cross with more refined selection over more years for obligate outcrossing. In my experience you would then have to cross it again to get palatability and short seasonality back. It could also be an interesting tomato to cross with the 50% and 25% habrochaites crosses I have now.

I got some blossom bags last year for the first time but only used them to isolate some lines of Arthropod resistant tomatoes. Using them to also test for self-incompatibility is on my to do list but it (and some trichome microscopy) also proved to be more work than expected. So, growing fewer plants total would probably help me have the time to actually conduct those little studies on the ones I do grow.

I planted a few seeds of my favorite 2024 The One. It was a rugose potato leaf dwarf.

So still waiting for true leaves but they seem leggy for a dwarf. The other three seedlings with dwarfism from other sources seem to be segregating for the trait.

If the leaves turn out to be regular leaf I shall be quite intrigued.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2025-02-03, 07:57:13 PMI planted a few seeds of my favorite 2024 The One. It was a rugose potato leaf dwarf.

So still waiting for true leaves but they seem leggy for a dwarf. The other three seedlings with dwarfism from other sources seem to be segregating for the trait.

If the leaves turn out to be regular leaf I shall be quite intrigued.

I was looking at the wrong pot. They seem pretty stable for seedling height and potato leaf. A good sign for this project to stabilize something!

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2025-02-03, 07:57:13 PMI planted a few seeds of my favorite 2024 The One. It was a rugose potato leaf dwarf.

I haven't been following the updates. Are these dwarfs a dedicated cross or natural outcrossing?

I ask mostly because I have been forced into growing smaller, indoors, and potentially hydroponically. I have a renewed interest in all crops that are dwarfs as of now because of this reason.

Quote from: Andrew Barney on 2025-03-10, 11:40:33 AMI haven't been following the updates. Are these dwarfs a dedicated cross or natural outcrossing?

I ask mostly because I have been forced into growing smaller, indoors, and potentially hydroponically. I have a renewed interest in all crops that are dwarfs as of now because of this reason.

Natural outcrossing with the dwarfism arising apparently independently. Though my indoor growout is nicely potato leaved but not very dwarf.

Very cool!

I have some seeds from the 2025 Going to Seed obligate outcrossing or self incompatible strains. I plan to grow them for seed increase.

I rouged (culled) the direct seeded row of the promiscuous project that had been selected for Self Incompatibility today. I also pulled a few more plants out of the transplant patch of the same genetics. Though the transplant patch is not nearly as interesting just because of the smaller population size. I selected for exposed or exserted stigmas and also disconnected anthers. I culled all plants that weren't blooming yet. I culled plants with very early fruit set. I'll attach some photos of flowers of keepers.

Interesting at least one of the two survivors of this year's adjacent direct seeded row of MMM x (Promiscuous x LA2329) would have been a keeper. I really hope the neighboring row contributes some pollen to it successfully because it's not setting fruit yet and thus may be SI!

Strange to see such variation in the another cones. With my project the cones stay stable but i havent crossed a extra tomato line ( sungold x rötte mürmel) in it yet.

I think with the promiscuous project Joseph used several domestic parents for diversity before he realized the logic of using HX-9 (later named Big Hill) his domestic line bred and stabilized for bicolor fruits and exserted stigmas. It also included multiple accessions of Solanum habrochaites and one Solanum penellii cross. So it started as a quite complicated population. In my effort to stabilize a sub-line of it for tasty fruit I think I observed subsequent crossing both intended and unintended. If I were to restart the project today I would try to make it a little less complicated. However I crossed unrelated domestic lines Exserted Orange and Exserted Tiger and I think observed this year a inserted descendant. Perhaps if it is F2 it crossed itself due to lack of isolation. Perhaps two different forms of exsertion genes can lead to insertion.

What are the odds of a solo Neandermato plant having fruit? Selfed or pollinated by other not-habrochaites plants? I have Improved Galapagos and Cache valley currant right near it. The rest is domestic or mostly domestic.
I had started several Neandermato. 2 got put in the garden. One didn't make it. I triple checked. There is only one plant.

Solo Neandermato plant, tiny fruits growing. Can get more pics tomorrow.

It is possible. Some habrochaites accessions are mixed SI and SC. Neandermato is essentially a super accession so some SC getting mixed in isn't unexpected. Also, back crossing may have happened which might just bring in SC- though we hoped that might be impossible.

Close ups of the plant

The plant from above. It's kind of sprawling out. Doesn't stand upright much.

Improved Galapagos is rather low sprawling plant too. Next to them is Cache valley currant which is sprawling but also holds more upright branches.

The Neadermato plant looks not fully wild to me. The pattern of leaflets on pure wild plants typically follows the pattern of "large-tiny-medium-tiny-large".

Neandermato leaves and flowers

As I was taking pics this big bee was busy on all the flowers. I saw it on the Neandermato, Cache valley currant, and improved Galapagos.

Fruits are still hard and green. I'm going to save seed and mark it so I know it has the selfing ability.

I was curious if it being capable of selfing means it could be pollinated by domestic tomatoes? Or different genes for that?
If it can be then that would be a way to get the habro mother side genes into a population.

Capable of selfing and capable of accepting domestic pollen may be two different things but could co-occur. I'd try pollinating it with Joseph's SI population and with domestic and see. It has super exserted stigmas so pretty easy to try different combinations and find out. Hybrids with it may be even more capable if you can make any with any of the possible parents.

I grew some seeds from a farmers market, they were large green when ripe tomatoes with vertical stripes. I thought you might be interested that all the flowers have open stamens. Not seen it before.
(https://i.ibb.co/xtMSQvK0/20250914-131043.jpg)

Good photo!

I found an interesting cross down in the foliage yesterday. 339 mild x 356. I was trying to cross with 356 because the 2025 plant refused to self or be manually crossed (still not a fruit on it)

339 is a offshoot of promiscuous I called The One x Mission Mountain and 356 is (Mission Mountain Morning or MMM x Galapagense X unknown) (MMM x (Promiscuous x LA2329)

Mission Mountain Morning is Mission Mountain Sunrise x Big Hill which is also known as HX-9 for OSSI.

Mission Mountain Sunrise is Brad x Blue Gold.

Big Hill is Jagodka x Hillbilly

Though if 356 is SI the 2024 generation was exposed to lots of potential fathers in the LA2329 arthropod resistant project so the true lineage might be a little more complex.

I am sometimes saddened to think that because of accidents of timing and some difficulty making crosses that while Big Hill is deeply integrated into my own work that Joseph's subsequent promiscuous project is underrepresented. This particular cross was made possible by improvements in my crossing skills in 2025. However the prior crosses on both sides were not. So with persistence I would guesstimate I'm making progress working with this promiscuous project material. 339 is easy to use as a cross mother and I have five packets of crosses with it already in 2025

339 mild x 283 31.25%
339 mild x 303 31.25%
339 mild x LA0410 56.25%
339 blue bicolor great fruity flavor x LA1385 56.25%
339 mild x PI 129143 56.25%

Also made
298 x SI
306 × SI
4-72 × SI
514 x 505

I just picked an LA0410 x 339 cross as well though that is just the reciprocal cross of one above.

Past years crosses included 292, 356, 514 and 339

I only have one surviving plant with green fruit of 292 direct seeded this year. It is MMM x (Promiscuous x LA2329). It may have been pollinated by SI if it is itself SI. I hope it ripens.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2025-09-21, 08:30:58 AMBig Hill is Jagodka x Hillbilly

Hillbilly is one my old-time favorites as far as flavor. It's one I consider part of the regional group of old heirloom beef steak types that have a strong adaptation to my geographic area. I think they originated and still seem to be most associated with the Appalachian Mountains but also well north, and west of them but not quite so much east or south. I don't know why.

Another heirloom I discovered a few years ago called Willard Wynn is very similar to Hillbilly except it makes considerably more, slightly smaller fruits. With very similar flavor I've replaced Hillbilly and some other similar ones like Yellow Brandywine, Pineapple and even my beloved Mr. Stripy with Willard Wynn.

Can't help but wonder what might come out if that original cross was made with WW instead of Hillbilly.

I might have asked before, but do you know in what direction that original cross was done? 

I have a vague memory of Joseph having done it with Hillbilly as the mother and then wishing he did it the other way because it was hard to get a ripe fruit from Hillbilly. Or maybe that was some other cross he did and used to illustrate the importance of using the local adapted tomato as the mother.

Joseph using Hillbilly in that cross means almost all of my tomatoes are descendants of Hillbilly. Also most are descendents of Brad and Jagodka. Though also most are descendants of Blue Gold bred by Brad Gates.

One other tomato 493 Black Bumblebee x 319 ((MMM X GalapagenseX) X (MMM x LA2329))

Though it doesn't contain any of the original promiscuous as an ancestor may have picked up Self Incompatibility from its 1/8 LA2329 so I made crosses with it as the father instead of getting a fruit back from it. I think it might be a good idea to keep some self incompatible plants around just in case there is a cross that retains that character and planting all Solanum habrochaites descendents together if possible to avoid the loss of breeding lines.

Quote from: William Schlegel on 2025-09-21, 08:30:58 AMI found an interesting cross down in the foliage yesterday. 339 mild x 356. I was trying to cross with 356 because the 2025 plant refused to self or be manually crossed (still not a fruit on it)

339 is a offshoot of promiscuous I called The One x Mission Mountain and 356 is (Mission Mountain Morning or MMM x Galapagense X unknown) (MMM x (Promiscuous x LA2329)

Mission Mountain Morning is Mission Mountain Sunrise x Big Hill which is also known as HX-9 for OSSI.

Mission Mountain Sunrise is Brad x Blue Gold.

Big Hill is Jagodka x Hillbilly

Though if 356 is SI the 2024 generation was exposed to lots of potential fathers in the LA2329 arthropod resistant project so the true lineage might be a little more complex.

I am sometimes saddened to think that because of accidents of timing and some difficulty making crosses that while Big Hill is deeply integrated into my own work that Joseph's subsequent promiscuous project is underrepresented. This particular cross was made possible by improvements in my crossing skills in 2025. However the prior crosses on both sides were not. So with persistence I would guesstimate I'm making progress working with this promiscuous project material. 339 is easy to use as a cross mother and I have five packets of crosses with it already in 2025

339 mild x 283 31.25%
339 mild x 303 31.25%
339 mild x LA0410 56.25%
339 blue bicolor great fruity flavor x LA1385 56.25%
339 mild x PI 129143 56.25%

Also made
298 x SI
306 × SI
4-72 × SI
514 x 505

I just picked an LA0410 x 339 cross as well though that is just the reciprocal cross of one above.

Past years crosses included 292, 356, 514 and 339

I only have one surviving plant with green fruit of 292 direct seeded this year. It is MMM x (Promiscuous x LA2329). It may have been pollinated by SI if it is itself SI. I hope it ripens.

So the 339 x 356 fruit had no viable seeds inside! Quick dud!

Do habrochaites (Neandermato) soften like a regular tomato when ripe? They're quite small but I will start checking the bigger ones.

I think they will even fall off the plant when ripe and turn a yellowish color on the ground when perfectly ripe.

I direct seeded six packets of SI strain Lofthouse promiscuous project tomatoes today. I sorted out three I had saved and then when I checked the mailbox there were three from Joseph. I planted them in two relatively short rows in two different gardens. The rows were short because I had to dig out the weeds and grass in the first garden and hoe the second before I could plant. I just hand seeded- didn't get the seeder out. Packets were: DS SI Earliest cherries, DS SI largest fruit from week five of harvest red and black skin on top, DS SI third picking, S-4 a farmer favorite, disease tolerant from Kentucky, A25-37 a farmer favorite fruity orange, and J44-8 a farmer favorite sibling group orange fruity beefsteak- but the latter Joseph said has poor germination. I may direct seed some more tomatoes next weekend, but I used up the SI seed I believe.

Last summer I discovered a natural hybrid within my population of Solanum Cheesmanii—identified by cherry tomato sized fruit instead of current size.

I saved seed from it. This spring 1/4 of the plants show the potato-leaf phenotype. I suspect the pollen donor came from this project which had a potato leaf ancestor that I call Brad for lack of a better name.

I also noticed what looked like crosses between [cheesmanii x pimpinelifolium] and [galapagense x pimpinelifolium]. I grow those as well.

And I saved and replanted a population of solanum cheesmanii with exserted stigmas.

[Solanum cheesmanii x unknown]
cheese-F1-orange-LR.jpg


[Solanum cheesmanii x pimpinelifolium]?
cheese-F1-red-LR.jpg


[Solanum galapagense x pimpinelifolium]?
galapagense-red-LR.jpg

That is really good progress working with the two Galapagos island tomatoes. One of the things that made it into the 40 cells I planted is a clump of 50% Solanum galapagense tomatoes from a few years back. I hope to cross them with some of the 50% currant and indigenous tomatoes which are mostly from last year which just turned out to be a great year for crosses.

One thing that I regret not growing out this year is some 50% or greater Solanum habrochaites like my promiscuous x LA2329 cross. I would like to dilute that to 25% again but with the 50% currant and indigenous tomatoes as the cross to maintain a 50% or higher wild and indigenous percentage overall. Next year perhaps if I can hang on to the goal.

Just finished direct seeding promiscuous project tomatoes. Did the usual NW garden of #339 promiscuous x Mission Mountain. Then added two rows of mixed strain direct seeded promiscuous on either side of the SI promiscuous in the West central garden. Then I just took and added a couple of my favorite domestic projects 294 and 365 to the remaining mix and seeded it in the SW garden for production I guess.

I planted out six week old plants for this project on May 22nd and 23rd. Direct seeded the same varieties on May 19th.

Also sent seeds to about 30 growers who committed to careful selection for self-incompatibility and promiscuous flowers.

In addition to the original promiscuous clade, I continue to explore five of the pure wild species.

About 378 tomato transplants.
pptt-tomatoes.jpg

I included about five fun crosses with the promiscuous project in my transplant plantings yesterday. A couple crosses with the SI strains I made sure to plant close to the SI direct seeding and to each other.

Today, I planted one Solanum pennellii plant in an isolated garden, and surrounded it by allegedly self-incompatible plants from this project. Will watch for fruit set.

In my main field, I also planted a row of pennellii near the allegedly self-incompatible plants, and I inter-planted S habrochaites into the population. Making introductions in this manner seems much easier to me than deliberate manual pollination. I seem to lack the discipline to do that kind of careful work.

My two direct seeded rows of the obligate outcrossing self incompatible strains got weeded today. They self thinned quite a bit due to the repeat frosts including Mondays.

Frost on June 8th?
Is that unusually late for you??
About a month after here, ... and I find that hard enough to work with!

Tim DH

Excited about the tomatoes! Wildling, Mission Mountain grex, The One MMS & MMM Crossing Block from William, Goingtoseed grex...

One Mission Mountain grex seems dwarf, and has a fruit with antho shoulders. Another plant doesn't have fruit yet but the leaves have alot of what looks like antho coloring? Stress or does antho show up that way too?

None of the The One-x seem dwarf.

I didn't tie up plants that didn't need it yet. I'll note plants that are better at supporting themselves.

Goingtoseed grex tomatoes are seed that I saved last year. Pretty sure they were all orange fruits. Excited to see how they do with a year of adaptation. And attempt to cross them.

Quote from: Tim DH on 2026-06-13, 10:06:46 PMFrost on June 8th?
Is that unusually late for you??
About a month after here, ... and I find that hard enough to work with!

Tim DH

Yes average is May 15th and in recent years it's usually been earlier.

Quote from: Kadence Luneman on 2026-06-13, 11:55:48 PMExcited about the tomatoes! Wildling, Mission Mountain grex, The One MMS & MMM Crossing Block from William, Goingtoseed grex...

One Mission Mountain grex seems dwarf, and has a fruit with antho shoulders. Another plant doesn't have fruit yet but the leaves have alot of what looks like antho coloring? Stress or does antho show up that way too?

The older Mission Mountain grex from EFN is mostly domestic work of mine and might contain some crosses with dwarfs. The newer EFN MMGII contains a lot of 339 which is a segregating snapshot of my dwarf selection of the one x Mission Mountain. Anthocyanin does often show up in the leaves and stems first.