Tomato Breeding - F1 hybrid Habrochaites Grow Journal

Hi

I have been breeding/cross pollinating my favorite tomato varieties for about 5 years now.

My general philosophy is wanting a more robust plant with my opinion of most heirloom varieties as tasting great but they are big sooks with disease/vigor issues.

My analogy is if you inbreed for hundreds of years it will inevitably look like the royal family, no offence intended.

So when i saw the S. Habrochaites in Joseph’s post (Auto-Hybridizing Tomatoes) i knew i had to get those genetics.

With a lot of luck i have got some F1 hybrid Habrochaites here in Australia and despite the late nature of the season grew out a few to confirm a number of factors.

Due to the enormous difficulties we have in Australia in obtaining plant material i’m “paying it forward” and offering both surplus seeds and plant material to permies in OZ for FREE.

I will have Prunings ready very soon which i expect would root readily if given half a chance....just message me your address
.
So on with the pics of my babies.

more pics

Karl: Great work! I love the leaves of Solanum habrochaites. I look forward to ongoing updates about this project.

Very interesting posts.

Curious about the two plants, I Googled and found this long and detailed article comparing and contrasting cold tolerances in the wild and domesticated tomato.
http://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-015-0521-6

I formerly worked as a nurse practitioner and always disliked reviewing research that was done to prove something obvious to me and others. (However, basic science is desperately needed in all areas for just this. Sometimes the common wisdom is in error, as seen in the recent "discovery" that the normal human temperature is NOT 98.6 degrees. It was arbitrarily marked thus during manufacture of the first thermometers.)  javascript:emoticon('');

But I digress. After all that intense tomato genetic investigation and pages of charts and diagrams, this is the final sentence in the discussion portion of the paper:
                           "Thus, differences in cold regulatory mechanisms may contribute to the differences in cold tolerance of these two tomato species." SMH

Anyway, I am following this work with great interest.

Hi Ellie

that a so scary/funny about body temperature .....over the years the more i look the more i find many of our truths are based on convenience, assumptions or what benefits that person at the time. talking about health i dare you to look up the mg/kg of vitamin c recommended for guinea pigs then work out what that would translate for a human ............i think you will be shocked.

i have herd that atherosclerosis could be sub clinical scurvy with the body trying to repair the tissue (collagen) damage the deficiency causes.

i too digress

population genetics is a funny thing..........as a whole a plant/animal may or may not show a wide spread trait until "selection" is performed. take pesticide resistance in insects 99% could be kill by the spray..........not particularly resistant as a population/species..........what really saved that 1% was the diversity of genes to allow all the ducks to line up in just the right way.

one of my favorite sayings is ... infinite combinations, infinite possibilities

so the trick is to have the diversity to draw from for it to work.

Definitely agree, Karl. The longer I am a medical "insider" the more I find myself switching to natural remedies like herbs and essential oils. But I don't need to elevate my cortisol levels by continuing in this vein.  

I'm 65 next month and moving from 16 straw bales last summer to biointensive, except for two (8' and 13') hugelkultur beds, this spring. That's enough to keep me occupied. Although I would be right there breeding a better OP tomato with you even 10 years ago, I think younger folks should have the opportunity.

Hi Karl

Great work will they survive the colder months or do they wilt like normal tomatoes

Hi

i'm not sure but the but the pure breed Habrochaites can take frost. i have them in pots so i can put in a sunny spot over winter to test them out.

Nick alevras wrote:Great work will they survive the colder months or do they wilt like normal tomatoes

I estimate that the cold hardiness of Solanum habrochaites is in the neighborhood of 25 F. Last spring/fall, my plants survived a number of snow storms. That's warm snow, which is different to me than snow on the ground followed by strong radiant cooling. If I were making a hardiness scale, it would look like this:

Tomato --> S. Habrochaites --> Tomatillo --> Cape Gooseberry

With each species being more frost tolerant than the previous.

amazing stuff!............i find my toms are pretty much dead/non productive before the frost hits them........the cold damp conditions just turns the leaves to mush.

Just Saying hi. I've got some S. habrochaites seeds for this years tomato experiments. I grew Josephs WildX5 last year which may have had S. habrochaites ancestry or another wild tomato ancestor. It was an interesting tomato.

I've got some S. cheesmaniae and S. galapagense seedlings started. Lokking forward to working with some of the wild tomato genetics.

Been following Joseph's experiments for years, including his Frost tolerance trials and his auto-hybridizing project. The original thread with the frost tolerance trials has been quite interesting over on the Alan Bishop Homegrown Goodness Plant Breeding Forum. Joseph also shares tomato stuff on the Tomatoville forum as well.

Looking forward to some better tomato varieties in the near future! It only took us a century or two to realize how inbred and bottlenecked our tomato crops had finally become...

sounds great i will have some more pics/updates soon

Ok. Update time for me. Sorry, not trying to hijack your thread, but this seems like the closest one to tag along with. Just seedlings right now, but my test seedlings for this year are getting bigger and are doing well.



The Solanum cheesmaniae ones show some variation, both in terms of antho stems vs. non-antho stems, but also in smell and what might be disease/bug susceptibility. Still all very interesting though. SC LA0422



There is one tall but more yellowish plant in the S. cheesmaniae batch. This is one of the two that lack antho coloring. This is also the one that smells slightly lemony. I'll be honest in saying that the slight lemony smell slightly bugs me. This is also the plant that is showing bug and/or disease susceptibility on the leaves (might be aphids). But this one is now showing early flowering in the 6th and maybe the 4th node.. so that's interesting. I'm more interested in the antho stem ones, but i wont kill it off. I'll keep watching it. Might be interesting. The others have leaves and smell similar to domestic tomatoes.



The Solanum galapagense have very interesting leaves. I really like them! Plus something interesting is that they have no smell! Not even traditional tomato leaf smell. So that's way cool! Very interesting. Excited for these. SG LA0317





A few S. habrochaites seedlings as well. And an early Wx5 plant trimmed bonzai style with 4 tomatoes already.

looks great i assume its just warming up over there as its getting to the end of the season here.

my fruit is about the same size.

I just posted the same update on Tomatoville and Homegrown Goodness. I spend most of my time on Homegrown Goodness because of all the interesting plant breeding projects over there.

I planted seedlings for Solanum habrochaites vg , Solanum habrochaites Fuzzy Leaf, Solanum Peruvianum, 0429 SC (antho, flowers large, exerted stigmas), 1408 SG (red fruit), 0530 SG (orange-brown fruits), 1410 SG (purple fruit), Fern x LA1777, LA1996 (Aft), LA4040 (IL 2-5 from S. pennellii), LA0214 (Dark Anthers from S. peruvianum), Orange Peach.

i also have some seedlings of LA4135 an F1 S. lycopersicon X S. Pennellii that is in the group of wilds and semi-wilds. Joseph might be interested in offspring from that. Will try to plant some seeds for LA0716 S. Penellii and LA1969 S. Chilense today though it is late. Worth a try anyway. I will be watching LA4040 closely because it is supposed to be the introgression line drom S. Pennellii for the unfused anther cone and S. Pennellii flower genes.

The one plant from seeds Joseph sent me for F2 Fern x LA1777 seems to be very healthy.

Andrew Barney wrote:i also have some seedlings of LA4135 an F1 S. lycopersicon X S. Pennellii that is in the group of wilds and semi-wilds. Joseph might be interested in offspring from that.

Yes!!! I'm very interested in offspring of that cross. S. pennellii grew poorly for me last year. I didn't get any successful crosses with  it. I still want to try to grab the anther shape from the species for inclusion in my promiscuous pollination projects.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:

Andrew Barney wrote:i also have some seedlings of LA4135 an F1 S. lycopersicon X S. Pennellii that is in the group of wilds and semi-wilds. Joseph might be interested in offspring from that.

Yes!!! I'm very interested in offspring of that cross. S. pennellii grew poorly for me last year. I didn't get any successful crosses with  it. I still want to try to grab the anther shape from the species for inclusion in my promiscuous pollination projects.

Ok, Joseph, i will do what i can. From the research i've done pennellii hybrids usually have a decreased fertility in the F2 generation (i'm assuming this means selfed) because some odd chromosome stuff. But i might try intentionally crossing it with the IL2-5 introgression line if that one does indeed have the pennellii flower traits. But also from my research pennellii and habrochaites are very closely related and crosses between pennellii and habrochaites may be more genome compatible. Therefore attempted crosses between this F1 pennellii hybrid and your F2 Fern x habrochaites hybrid may prove useful and interesting. I will do my best with whatever plants survive and grow well.

Solanum pennellii has other very interesting traits such as drought tolerance, a fascinating leaf shape, salt tolerance, and disease resistance, so whatever I can grab out of it will be welcomed, even if the unusual anther shape doesn't manifest. I finally recovered the flower type that I wanted from another project: In the 4th generation!.

Here's what this year's Solanum pennellii plants looked like a few minutes ago. I'm growing them in two different potting mixes, because they didn't do well for me last year, and I want to spread the risk out.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:Solanum pennellii has other very interesting traits such as drought tolerance, a fascinating leaf shape, salt tolerance, and disease resistance, so whatever I can grab out of it will be welcomed, even if the unusual anther shape doesn't manifest. I finally recovered the flower type that I wanted from another project: In the 4th generation!.

Here's what this year's Solanum pennellii plants looked like a few minutes ago. I'm growing them in two different potting mixes, because they didn't do well for me last year, and I want to spread the risk out.

True. I think that leaf shape is particularly interesting. But i found a paper today that said S. pennellii has a modified waxy layer on it's leaves which help with drought tolerance and keeping in moisture. Salt tolerance as well which is also why i'm interested in S. cheesmanaie and S. galapagense. But another paper compared the chemical compounds that are responsible for smells and/or tastes and said that while S. cheesmanaie and S. galapagense have higher amounts of these than domestic tomatoes (despite having some sort of transposon) that S. pennellii has the highest amount out of any tomato wild or domestic (and also lacks the transposon). In theory this means that S. pennellii has the greatest potential for new tomato flavors.

I have some Martian regolith simulated soil i got for salt tolerance testing. Also for cool mars plant breeding. If i have enough seeds i might try putting in seeds for cheesmanaie, galapagense, and pennellii. Not sure if i do though.

@imgrimmer wrote:I am really excited to see the fruits.

Okay, lets see if my old Flickr account will work for these photos. I have since abandoned Photobucket since the new external link to photos must be paid for. The photos are still there on photobucket if you click on the link. If it works, i actually think i like the Flickr interface better. Not sure why i didn't switch back earlier.

Here are some photos of unripe F1 Solanum pennellii x domestic tomato fruits.

Ok spring has sprung here so just a quick update on my progress.

To cut a long story short birds/possums nicked my fruit but the plants all survived the winter (no frosts to speak of).

They ended up looking a little sad but cut them back hard and they are re shooting now as it warms up..................they flowered all winter!

Last season i did do a cross between these F1 hybrid Habrochaites and my Kumato x Black from Tulla.

The Kumato is a modern black tomato that has very good vigor and cold tolerance, taste is very ordinary.

I seedlings are shown below with some showing signs of the distinctive serrated leaves.

I plan on doing a frost test in the freezer soon and will also bias towards the serrated leaf type.

Interesting report! Keep us updated!

I want to try growing the Kumato. Does it taste good? Better than red store tomatoes?

Funny you are biased towared selecting serated leafs. I am currently growing an F2 Pennellii hybrid indoors during the winter and i am leaning towards selecting toward potato leaved. This one has NO SMELL really. Does not smell like a wild tomato and does not smell like a regular tomato. In fact the leaves kind of taste like spinach. Imagine that! A Tomato with edible foliage that can be used a spinach substitute in salads?!!

20171110_100319_cropped by Andrew Barney, on Flickr

You guy's might find the chapter on wild tomato crosses in the USSR in 1957 particularly interesting!

keen101.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/wide_hybridization_in_plants_tsitsin1.pdf

any update Karl? you are growing in AU, are you not?

Wow Andrew!  How was the fruit quality on your "spinach leaf" tomato?  :)

Really sounds wonderful.  If you ever have spare seeds I'd love to do some additional work over here in Maine.

Cheers

Greg Martin wrote:Wow Andrew!  How was the fruit quality on your "spinach leaf" tomato?  :)

Really sounds wonderful.  If you ever have spare seeds I'd love to do some additional work over here in Maine.

Cheers

Greg: There is a packet of that seed in the letter I put together for you a few minutes ago. Enjoy.

Thanks Joseph!!!  Bless you!

Hi Greg, didn't see your post until now. Glad you got some seeds. Seems Joseph is trying to distribute the ones i sent him to others as well. Fine by me, always helpful to have more people working to breed better newer tomatoes by using wild tomato relatives.

apparently my post got cut off...

As for fruit quality, i dont know. The fruits all fell off. I think SI (self-incompatibility) may have been restored in this plant. The F1 fruits tasted terrible. F2 fruits may have a range from terrible to good depending on what genetic lottery they get. Trying to keep this plant alive until spring when i can plant it sometime.

Good luck!

This tomato may or may not have edible spinach foliage like i thought. Maybe cooked? It did develop i light smell later on. Not like a tomato. More like lemon basil. Kind of cool.

The F2 plants should be planted as many as possible to get as many different combinations as possible.

Hope your growing is going well Karl!

I don't mean to keep hijacking your thread, but for those interested i added map photos to the wiki for where all the wild tomatoes come from. S. habrochaites infomation is sparse and lacking at the moment, so please help add info to the wiki.

https://biolumo.com/index.php?title=Tomato_Breeding_Database/Solanum_habrochaites

Hi, I’m from UK and currently growing some Solanum habrochiites in greenhouse. Unfortunately, they are not doing well showing some leaf blisters. Do you have any idea of growing instructions for this plant please?