mildew resistant tomatoes

Hello,
i grew Crimson Crush F1 last year and was amazed by its performance, both in blight resistance and especially vigour.
I never before had any outdoor tomatoes that grew so well and ripened fruit.
So following in the footsteps of great people i don't need to mention i set about trying to dehybridise the hybrid.
I had 10 tomato plants sown from seed of the crimson crush in total.
7 rotted away just like tomatoes do here in general, but 3 plants withstood and are making fruit.

Now keep in mind here that we are talking about pacific northwest climate with, just recently, 2 weeks of rain almost every day and temperatures rarely exceeding 68F -20C
for all you american folks (i live in brittany, france)
These 3 tomato plants, while not being completely unscathed, show a remarkable resistance to mildew and an amazing genetic diversity.

The fact of trying to obtain an open-pollinated mildew resistant variety of tomatoes from the crimson crush f1 hybrid represents no trouble, but rather a great joy and satisfaction to my mind, in case you were wondering, for i believe that nature,plants and genetic heritage belongs to all humanity.
While they may well sell their precious creation, which contains ph1 and ph2 resistant genes thank you very much, we can toy around with the seeds offspring.


-large orange tomato, a bit weirdly shaped, slight mildew but ripening

-well-sized round tomato, not ripe yet, very little mildew

-small sized tomato, not ripe yet, no signs of mildew

That’s a great idea. I’d never considered keeping hybrid seeds- I‘d assumed they were sterile.

I am experimenting with tomatoes myself. I grew three varieties this year. One made rather small crunchy tomatoes and I won’t save seed but will plant the rest of the packet next year. One made the most delicious paste tomato I have ever eaten (same as last year) but did fall prey to mildew. I’ll give it a shot in a different spot next year to see if more airflow will help. I’ve saved seed from the best tomatoes on the least mildew affected plants. My third variety are not quite as tasty, but texture, size, and yield are fantastic. Also they had no mildew issues. I’ve saved seed and will plant them alongside my mildewy friends next year to see if I can get a desirable cross down the line.

Edited to add photos!

Good luck with your dehybridising experiment but if you want to get a non hybrid blight resistant variety 'primabella' is a good one. Its cherry type so not similar to your hybrid but could be good for cross breeding.

The weather has been grey and wet here too for a similar time too and all mine are blight /mildew free for the time being when courgettes have been getting it continously.

interesting! I never had mildew on my plants. but late blight is a real problem here. I wonder why mildew is not occuring on my tomatoes as it does on courgette and cucumbers every year.

The third plant on the 25th of october. Still resisting really well and the fruit still green

5 days ago i put plastic over the plant to get the fruit to ripen. It seems to work.
I never had a tomato plant survive outdoors for that long.
I am asking myself if ,since this is the F2, the offspring will continue to segregate.
This variety as it is now is pretty useless since it produces few tomatoes that take forever to ripen, but its disease-resistance is amazing,
so i hope the genes will be shuffled around again when i sow its seeds.

3 stable varieties have now been selected that all perform very well.
The idea is to release them under the OSSI pledge.
The 2 pictures are of the medium sized variety "Shanne"

I spoke to a friend who grew this variety "Shanne" this year and he told me they harvested over 50 kilos of good ripe tomatoes from 14 plants outdoors in the wind and rain..
They gave more than the ones in the tunnel that had to be watered so they practically stopped growing tomatoes in the tunnel.
Seeds have all been given away freely. I earned exactly nothing by doing this, but i don't mind.

The three varieties are:
1) Shanne - medium sized tomatoes, most prolific.
2) Christophe - large tomato, heavy,sturdy support needed. Gives a lot, too.
3)Phil - large flesh tomato with rather few seeds, my selection.