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Fun stuff. I've been playing with some similar ideas for the past year on ornamental plants.

Ran into a patent that discussed certain antibiotics being able to induce variegation in soy plants. Apparently plastids, including chloroplasts, are similar enough to certain kinds of bacteria that certain types of antibiotics can be effective in destroying some portion of them. Which makes sense since a few hundred million years back they were probably literally bacteria that became trapped in plant cells.

Got a few dozen monstera deliciosa seeds and soaked groups of them in different amounts of streptomycin (one of the antibiotics listed in the patent) for a little over a week. I germinated those, as well as a group with no streptomycin. Early results seemed promising, with more heavily dosed seedlings being on average more pale with some random blotches obviously making less than the normal amount of chlorophyll. Also notable was that growth was slower the more heavily treated the seeds were, though germination rate stayed the same to marginally better. But after growing a while (by the time the first couple of leaves had hardened off), all the new growth didn't seem to be chloroplast deficient in any of the plants. About 11 months out now and I couldn't tell you the difference between any of the groups if it weren't for the labels. I'm tempted to try again with higher concentrations or longer exposure, but my feeling is it wouldn't stick regardless. Possible spectinomycin would be a better option too, but streptomycin is what I was able to find.

EMS is interesting. That will definitely cause actual genetic changes across the genome in just about anything. Lots of them won't be visible, lots of them will be deadly to the plant, and a handful might be interesting with a large enough batch. But it's messy to handle - it's not just a mutagen in plants, it's a mutagen and carcinogen in mammals, and a pretty aggressive one from what I understand. Been sitting in my cart at Sigma Aldrich for a couple months, I'm tempted play with it but want to be cautious.

Could always follow in the steps of those kids on YouTube and make an x-ray machine and shoot it at some seeds I guess hah

Ben, did you have any success learning to cross basil by hand? What crosses would you want to do?

Sorry for the slow response Andrew, haven't logged in for a while. Didn't get very far with this. I never found any useful information on the practical aspects of cross pollinating basil by hand. Decided to plant a few different varieties in very close proximity and cross my fingers. They were growing fine, I enjoyed some nice basil heavy salads, but before anything made it to flower, the bloody rabbits found their way into the basil cage and consumed everything in a single evening. Those little jerks get pretty desperate for green stuff by mid summer in dry Southern California.

Didn't really have a concrete end goal in mind, but a couple directions I was looking at casually:
- Tempering a very spicy purple variety with a standard sweet basil and maybe getting some fun colors (or to look at it differently, amping up a typical sweet basil with a little extra spice)
- Taking one of those giant "lettuce leaf" varieties and working toward a purple version

I was also thinking about a holy basil x basil cross initially, but pretty sure that wouldn't have been possible. Chromosome counts were way off if I remember correctly.

I still have a bunch of seeds, should give the basil another shot. Been completely distracted from my veggies working on some philodendron hybrids for the past while, they're time consuming

I planted a bunch of habrochaites x reisetomate f2 yesterday.

The F1 eventually became orange. The flowers were slightly exerted on the F1 as well. Assuming it was due to the small fruit size combined with having 4-6 stigmas in each individual flower.

Should be easier to further cross this if it's exerted. I should probably select for the reisetomate tomato types before further doing that though.

Curious what the fruit was like on your F1s. Reistomate-ish in form or not so much?

I have a very limited amount of (likely) F1 seed going in the ground soon

Noticing something as fruit is getting bigger - the fruit on plants grown from Baker Creek's seed acquired this year have the individual cherry lobes more deeply separated compared to the fruit on the line I've been keeping. Mine seem to have broader area where they're fused together. Not sure which I prefer at this point.

Thank you. Appropriate that someone with the name Ocimum should reply hah! I'll try a deeper search in google scholar, I was initially mostly finding stuff about inducing polyploidy with colchicine

Is there any information out there on crossing basil by hand, or does anyone have personal experience? It's not in any of my books, and I'm not getting much off google (and what little I have gotten there has been contradictory). Mostly looking for basics on timing, technique, compatibility, etc. Seems like it would be fun to play with - so many distinct and strong aromas

Oh wow, I took some Reistomate cuttings the other day and threw them in water. Totally forgot about it. They've already got some nice roots going. That was easy.

That's wild!

Very cool Garrett! Glad to see someone else playing with this interesting plant.

William - forgot to update you. Didn't see too much in the way of exposed stigmas. Out of 25ish flowers, there were around 5 that looked like the stigma was maybe about level with the top of the cone, and 2 more just barely exposed. It's possible there are more than that, on some of the crazier flowers I'm having trouble distinguishing what parts are what because everything seems out of place. Regardless, there might still be a place for them in a 'promiscuous pollination' patch though... once the flowers open up they seem ready to share gobs and gobs of pollen. Shake them a little bit and it just falls out. Touch them and it's yellow streaks on your fingers.

The flowers are interesting. Some of them are like the fused kind of beefsteak flowers that I've seen called "marigold" style flowers. But there are a bunch more that have the same multiple stigmas/anthers/etc, except they're arranged in a neat and tidy little donut / ring shape. Sepals around the outside as usual, then a ring of all the important bits, and then some bonus sepal-like structures in a tiny ring right in the center of the flower. And I did notice a couple of flowers that look like they might only form a single globe.

Work got busy and I missed the opportunity to hit some of my first-choice target plants with pollen. Looks like I'll be starting a new round of seeds. I may let a few take over the indoor grow room. Anyone have tips on the best light cycle (or anything else) for growing tomatoes indoors? Never tried before.

That makes sense.

Hopefully I have better luck outdoors. I did a few hand pollinated crosses years ago with apparent success, but haven't tried this in a long time. If it comes to it, I'll try growing a few indoors sometime later.

I read your thread about exserted stigmas a while back, and Joseph Lofthouse's post on his site about the same. I've started collecting seed for some known exserted varieties, including some wild ones. At some point I'll do a plot of all of them planted nearly on top of each other and let them have a freaky plant party.

Questions for reisetomate growers. These flowers that result in the complex fruits. Are some of the stigmas exposed? This is important because it results in greater cross pollination. Second question. If you have a pollination tool. Can you collect substantial released pollen from the flower? Sounds like from Ben's dissection description there is a lot of pollen when dissected, so I'm just curious to know if the pollen blasts out and how much? Some varieties in my experience seem to produce relatively little and others abundantly.

Another thought is partial crossing. Emasculate a clump flower as best as possible and cross with something obvious in the F1. No need to get 100% crosses if you can easily Identify the crossed seedlings at a young age. Potato leaf as mother works well for this as any regular leaf seedlings are crosses.

I didn't notice exposed stigmas in any of the flowers I was working with, but I also wasn't specifically looking for that and it was getting dark. I'll take a more thorough look next time I'm out there. I haven't tried to get any pollen out of the reisetomate flowers yet (well, not deliberately anyway). I'll see if I can do a comparison with a more standard tomato flower at some point. Judging from my fingers, there was a lot packed in there, but it also seemed to be wrapped up pretty tight inside the flower.

Not sure I'm quite understanding your partial crossing comment. Is the idea to only worry about hitting some of the stigmas in the flower and allow the rest to self, then just sort them out later?

I've had a few of these flowers this year on my Falen's First Snow plants (a mutation of Cherokee Purple with variegated foliage).

Photos show the flowers a few weeks ago, and then fruits a few days ago. The two big fruits toward the left and bottom came out of the fused flower. In person, they're about twice as big as the others.

Im not sure if the multi fused flower trait is dominant or not,  but it might not be a bad idea to cross the cherry type with a beefsteak type that also has a few fused flowers.

Thanks for linking that thread, interesting. All of the big and heavily variegated Falen's First Snow plants I mentioned have a handful of fused flowers on them, so that sort of cross is already planned.

As far as even ripening... I know I've grown cherries before where clusters would ripen almost simultaneously. Might be worth tracking down something like that for a future cross. But for the moment, I think I'll just focus on taste and looks.

This took an interesting turn when I went out to emasculate the Reisetomate flowers last night. From the outside the flowers look the same as a typical tomato flower, but the inside was an overstuffed mash of parts. I need to go back and get a look in better light and take pictures, but I'm pretty sure I was looking at multiple pistils, multiple bits of anther, and underneath multiple ovaries. I tried 7 or 8 flowers from 3 different plants, and they were all similar. I had to go emasculate a few flowers on other varieties to make sure I hadn't lost my mind / forgotten what things are supposed to look like.

I guess this might explain how these tomatoes get their unusual shape... literally multiple tomatoes coming off of one receptacle, fusing as they grow. Needs more investigation. I'll take some photos, maybe someone here has more insight.

It's a minor hiccup for the actual breeding part unfortunately. I was planning to mostly pollinate the Reisetomate plants with pollen donated from the other varieties, and based the numbers of each kind I started on that. But I don't think there's any way I can pollinate these weird flowers successfully and be confident that they haven't self pollinated. Everything is just really mashed together in there and my hands were smeared with pollen after opening the flowers up. I guess I'll be collecting pollen from the Reisetomates and applying it to the others now... no big deal, just going to have a lot of extra Reisetomate plants and less margin for error with the others now. Actually might be for the best now that I'm thinking about it, the Reisetomates don't make all that many seeds, which is something I probably should have considered initially.

Oops, didn't mean to disappear for so long. And it looks like my last reply never posted, maybe I only hit preview or got distracted by a shiny object.

Short version of my last post: I thought it was interesting that other folks aren't having the same uneven ripening with this variety. Not sure if it's the line I've had going, or if I just have a specific and narrow definition of ripe for this tomato (basically evenly red, but also with an even firm texture all across such that the individual cherries can be picked off cleanly). Since I wasn't sure, I decided to pick up some fresh stock of the Reisetomate seeds to run along with mine. So far, I can't tell any difference, but they're just starting to set fruit.

I started a lot of varieties, but ultimately decided to really narrow this project down to a few hopefuls with the tastes and colors I'm most eager about. These are the picks:

• Black Beauty
• Falen's First Snow (Cherokee Purple mutation with variegated leaves)
• Volunteer that grows in the gully below my house (small red globes)
• Rosella

Black Beauty looks like it will prove to be as dark as ever... even the stems have black/purple coloration running up and down them. I've eaten these before, but I don't think I've actually grown them.

The Falen's First Snow plants are really cool looking overall. Never grown these before. About 2/3 of them are big vigorous plants, heavy variegation across most of the foliage, and putting out a lot of fruit. I was wondering if the variegation would result in decreased performance, but they seem at least on par with Cherokee Purples I've grown in the past. As for the rest, something like 1/6 of them are runts with usually one stem that doesn't seem to want to branch, and the last 1/6 are mostly like standard Cherokee Purple (with just maybe one or two small variegated leaves tucked away somewhere on the plant). I have some ideas floating around for other projects I want to do based around this plant. And I'm very eager about the idea of a tasty black reisetomate that grows with variegated leaves. (Have I mentioned I'm into some freaky weird looking plants?)

The volunteer from my gully was chosen just because they're basically invincible and they do so well around here. Some of those plants are over 3 years old and just keep cranking out fruit year round, even through December and January. These things probably deserve their own breeding project. Fruit is sort of an over-sized cherry tomato, tastes pretty good.

And Rosella is there not just because it fits the bill of tasty and dark, but also because my gut is telling me that I'm going to have the easiest path toward my desired result by working with a cherry type. I guess we'll find out.

I'm growing a few other interesting things this year, and some s. peruvianum and s. pimpinellifolium for the first time, so there may be a few other random crosses thrown in the mix just for fun. But the list above is the focus.

I have some Black Beauty and Falen pollen collected. I'm about to walk out the door right now, forceps and tiny baggies in hand, to emasculate some Reisetomate flowers and apply pollen for the first time this year. I'll repeat the application in the morning and tomorrow night, just in case they're not quite receptive yet. (Doing this a wee bit later in the season than I'd planned, but the world went a little nuts and I've been distracted. Fortunately, I started plants in waves, so plenty more opportunities to pollinate!)


And William - thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look at Iron Lady. I still might start one more wave of plants, so I could probably squeeze that cross in this year. Probably important for me to step back once in a while and think about pest and disease resistance, as opposed to just trying to make things look bizarre.