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I've been wondering what pollinated tomatoes in Australia?! I get native bees in the genus Bombus in Montana USA and have been thinking alot about habitat enhancements this winter.

When I lived in the suburbs of Adelaide I never had an accidental cross, nothing seemed to visit tomato flowers other than thrips 🙄  But now that I live in rural New South Wales I see an occasional blue banded bee, and they do like tomato flowers.  Even so I've only noticed one accidental cross in 10 years.  But I don't save seeds from fused-blossom catfaced tomatoes in order to avoid any accidental crosses, which was important for me as a seed seller of dwarf project varieties. I now leave seed-selling of project varieties up to others, and I just enjoy eating the fruits with their tasty seed gels intact for a change 😅

I'm curious whether catfacing is allowed or avoided for promiscuous breeding projects? 🤔

Patrina

Good idea.

I have seeds of about 62 dwarfs so I'll grow one of each this year and see which have exerted stigmas.

I can suggest that Summertime Green may have exerted stigmas, it certainly always did here in Australia where I lack pollinators being interested in tomatoes hence I was lucky to to get 2 or 3 tomatoes per plant 😏

I gave up growing that variety which was disappointing because it's so delicious!

Patrina

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But very cool variety! Might be worth adding to my grow list for next year! How does it taste? Do you know an approximate DTM?

Hi Andrew

Can't believe it's 2 years since I posted about Gondwana Lava!  My Gondwana Series are now on the OSSI site and I'm planning to create some additions to this series after a decade of insisting I won't do more crosses, so I guess breeding really is too addictive to resist 😏

For my environment the Gondwanas are late and they hang on the vine for ages at full grown size.  The plants seem a bit more compact than most dwarfs even though they keep flowering into autumn and are only around a metre tall. I've gone back to some F5s and F6s of some speckled Gondwanas that I wasn't sure if the speckles were disease related, and they're happily just speckles, a light dusting of gold dots! I'll grow them for another season to finalise.

I'll be interested in any crosses you do, hopefully checking back to the forum every now and then 😁

Patrina

Thanks William. After googling to find out more about progress with Jim's research I noted more releases - Midnight Roma, Indigo Cherry Drops, Indigo Pear Drops.

I contacted Jim to get his opinion about anthocyanins in Gondwana Lava and he said it is certainly possible, and that there might be enough light penetration several cell layers into the pericarp to trigger the production of anthocyanin, perhaps also related to thinner epidermis.  The search continues for a gene that isn't light dependent.

This doesn't yet appear on the OSSI website but I pledged it last year along with Gondwana Lightning, Gondwana Thunder, and Gondwana Rose which were all from the same cross [Curiosity F1 = Adelaide Festival F5 (dwarf) X Indigo Rose (non dwarf)] and Gondwana Moon from another cross using Indigo Rose as the pollen donor.

Gondwana Lava appears to have anthocyanins forming in the flesh more than the other Gondwanas but I'd like to have someone confirm that it is indeed anthocyanin expression that I am seeing. I seem to recall reading some time ago that Jim Myers was working towards anthocyanins inside the tomato so that it was more than skin deep so to speak.

In this sliced fruit pic the side of the fruit exposed to the sun has more purple tinge than the flesh on the shaded side