Hi! You just inspired me to join up too, I was considering crossing with an F1 that was heterozygous for PH-2 and PH-3 (Hot Streak looks promising, especially with all its other resistances plus size and taste) but if there’s a good enough one that’s homozygous that could be preferable, and searching for such, I found your comment here.
That sounds awesome! I would so love to have some seeds if available. I don’t mind if not stable, I could grow a few and try crossing with all of them just in case. Perhaps I have something I could trade with you for them? I would have PMed you but I could not find a PM function. I see you haven’t been here in March, I do so hope you see this!
If anyone has any other suggestions for a tasty homozygous PH-2 + PH-3 tomato (the larger size and earlier, the better), I would be really interested to hear.
Also has anyone tried both Lee’s ‘Wild Child’ and ‘Dwarf Hirsutum’? For the latter he does mention disease resistance but only on Wild Child (so far as I can see) does he specify LB. It would be great to combine the pimp resistance with the hab resistance. My Dwarf Hirsutum do have some blight so I am curious if Wild Child performs better, or… does anyone know of well performing LA1777 crosses for LB?
Could you say more about that? I couldn’t find more info searching. And do you know any tasty tomatoes that have good LB resistance from LA2175?
I’m also curious if any of you are crossing with arcanum. Mine are showing good resistance so far, and I’m working on some crosses.
Primabella is a nice cherry tomato with a very good resistance to late blight. But I don’t like the taste that much. Others like him.
I have not yet found a really good tasteful homozygous ph2 and ph3 plant. For me taste is more important than production. Maybe Galahad F1 with a brix of 5,0.
Damsel F1 heterozygous for ph2 and ph3 is praised by many for its good taste.
Medusa F1 heterozygous for ph2 and ph3 would also have a good taste, I can tell you more about that soon. Same for the taste of Hot Streak F1.
Purple Zebra F1 heterozygous for ph2 and ph3 has a good sweet taste.
Thanks. I wonder, since I’m crossing with wilds or wild crosses, perhaps that would still be worth it for the work saved by it being homozygous and apparently having even a bit of additional resistance on top of that if that’s really true… Mind you the size is so tiny that it was @Tomato_Nut 's mention of having a larger version available that really interested me but they seem to have disappeared from the forum and I have no way of contacting them.
Ok, and I see above you say Galahad is homozygous for PH-2 and PH-3? And seems 6~8oz compared to 1oz for Primabella from what I can see online…? I also see it has “High resistance to Fusarium wilt (races 1, 2, and 3), gray leaf spot, late blight, nematodes, tomato spotted wilt virus, and Verticillium wilt.” So it’s starting to sound pretty useful!
I love the fact that has so much other disease resistance, and I love the taste, but it’s just so late!
Hot Streak is listed as only 1 day later than Galahad. Do you consider them late, and/or later than Darkstar? Such a shame Hot Streak isn’t homozygous.
Or perhaps you have developed something even better whether through growing out a few generations (your Galahad growouts sound interesting), or from crossing, that’s better than any of the usual options? I’d be really interested in that. I can’t find a PM button to ask but would you be willing to share/sell some seeds of something that might work for my needs?
Also I really applaud your dehybridizing work! On the one hand I really appreciate how hard it must be to make a living from breeding open pollinated, and hybrids make that easier. But on the other hand, especially in the face of imminent global food crisis, I think we really need great open pollinated crops.
For me in 2021 (a cold wet year) it took 76 days from flower to red fruit for Galahad F1.
My earliest Galahad F4 plants took just over 50 days in 2023 to produce a ripe fruit. The problem with Galahad F4 is that the fruit set is very poor, so that sometimes no fruit comes to the first flowercluster. i have this problem with more beef size tomatoes.
Darkstar F1 needs just over 60 days from first flower to ripe fruit in 2023. And pollination is very good.
Hot streak F1 is still not ripe now while Darkstar F1 was already ripe on August 26th. In addition, many other fruits of Darkstar F1 are already ripe.
Hot streak F1 is therefore late with flower formation and takes a long time to ripen the fruits.
Just based on my limited observations, climate and root system is also a factor in addition to genetics. How extensive is the root system and how quickly does it take up water?. My Jaune Flamme had skin that was very thick and on some difficult to chew. Almost all fruit split. A 2 inch unknown variety had zero splitting and thinner skin.
I really loved the thin skin of Island Sunrise growing indoors. But outdoors, the slugs absolutely loved it! So much that none ripened fully on the vine without getting eaten (though it was growing very close to the ground). Right next to it was a Wilding with relatively thick skin which held totally ripe fruit on it with zero slug damage. That changed my thinking on skin thickness. Made me feel there’s a sweet spot on how thick the skin could be to balance eating and not being eaten by slugs.
I’m not sure if that was the only variable - perhaps others here can share about slug attraction? But they were being eaten even before being sweet enough to enjoy. Island Sunrise gets really sweet when ripe - it’s a mix of lyc., che., and pimp. Wilding is around 33% wild (hab. and pen.) though unfortunately all of my Wildings are blight prone, and Island Sunrise didn’t fair much better.
Yeah I figure there are ways around slugs, but I’m much more inclined to try to get around that by breeding. So if that means a thicker skin than Island Sunrise, I’m ok with that. (It’s unusually thin anyway). My aim is delicious neglectable tomatoes. I want them to be easy for people to grow, especially for upcoming food crisis times. Also to deal with the changing climate (including wishing to develop an SI variety so they have genetic adaptability). Basically I want more people to have access to delicious healthy food. So overcoming blight is essential, but I’m also interested in resilience, like hopefully never having to water them at all (aside maybe from when initially planting them), so able to deal with the new hotter drier spells and the wet cloudy spells both. If I had embryo rescue stuff set up I’d be thinking about the root systems of Solanum chilense, but I’m not set up for that. Trying some experiments crossing pennellii to peruvianum as a bridge to bring in some peruvianum genetics and maybe there’s a way there with chilense without having to get too technological, but right now more focusing on arcanum (which seems to have good roots and blight tolerance) and some crosses with chmielewskii to see if that might brings some interesting flavours - I also really love the smell of my chm. and arc. and am hoping to bring in some of their leaf smells - my F1s with those smell great, lets see if I can keep those smells in future generations. That’s not of practical value really but beauty in how things look and smell and feel is important to me too, part of the joy of life. Working with some other wild species too, again for flavours and hopefully some other resistances, like galapagense for arthopod resistance. Gal. is great for salt tolerance too although that’s not an issue here.
But yeah none of it’s worth much without blight resistance! And I was surprised to see my pimps and pers getting LB. The commercial ones seem so valuable for that as a source. Though 2 out of 3 of my habrochaites accessions are in the midst of blighted plants and are totally free from it. LA1777 and another one that seems to be relatively early, CGN15914, which could prove useful.
LA2533 has ph3 for late blight. One of the peruvianum lines I trialed had amazing roots. I could not pull the plants out of the ground. I broke the plants trying.
Cool. Although if I’m understanding things correctly, it would sound more useful to use a larger tomato with heterozygous PH-2 and PH-3.
Nice. Which accession? And how does it do against blight? Are you crossing with it? If so I’d be interested how. Oh, I just realised you said ‘lines’ - it is pure per., or, it’s a hybrid?
Pure peruvianum requires embryo rescue. I don’t recall which accession. Habrochaites is a better choice as you can direct cross with domestic tomato. But! Peruvianum has several genes of high interest including durable nematode resistance.
Do you know anyone who’s tried using pennellii as a per. bridge? I’m yet to see if my per x pen cross attempts will bear fertile seeds but I have fruits on several accessions. Then if successful it’s just a case of seeing if I can cross those with lyc.
Information I have on Mountain Gem is direct from Randy Gardner, not from my having grown it. He considers it one of the better releases from the NCSU program. I have seed and will be growing it next spring.
I also have seed of an unreleased variety named “Sweet Prince” which he considers worth experimenting with.