Anney, Sungold Select I and II were developed by Reinhard Kraft in Germany and he doesn't release anything unless it's genetically stable.

And yes, if you save F2 from the F1 hybrid or allow F1 volunteers to pop up and grow there's a good chance you will get some red fruited plants b'c DNA from the currant species is bred into almost all F1 hybrid cherries for the flat truss trait.

And yes, Sungold F1 and Sungold Select I and II all have RL foliage. I don't think I've heard of PL plants for any of them.

After Sungold Select II came Big Sungold and the latest is Big Sungold Select, just made available and I really like this last one. The fruits are larger than the hybrid and are orange almost from the get go and I think the taste is excellent although it doesn't have as strong fruitiness as the original but is getting closer.

Someone is working on a cross between Sungold and Lucky Cross and at least some initial selections appear to have that fruitiness but it isn't known if that trait will follow through to when there's a genetically stable OP.

Back to Big Sungold Select. I offered free seeds in my recent seed offer, now closed, that was elsewhere, and listed it in the 2010 SSE YEarbook and will be sending seeds for trial to the usual places I do b'c I know the owners, have for a long time, and trust them.

Carolyn

Here's the statement from Baker Creek I was basing my first question on:

=====
This is a selection from the regular Sungold tomato, sent to us by Reinhard Kraft of Germany. This is one of the tastiest orange cherry tomatoes out there! This little cherry was the favorite of many of our staff last summer; we love the sweet tangy taste! This variety is not completely stable and a few plants still produced red fruit.
http://rareseeds.com/cart/products/Sungold_Select_II_Tomato-1695-46.html
=====

So, not being familiar with botany and the way genetics works, if this is true, I'm wondering if this means that individual plants of the Sungold Select II will have all red cherries OR all orange ones, or can the plants of this selection have both colors on the same plant?

Anney, I can't speak for seed production at Baker Creek but it's entirely possible that there was some crossing gpoing on.

Look, I know Reinhard Kraft very well and he doesn't release genetically unstable varieties. I also know Jere at Baker Creek as well as their garden Manager.

(So, not being familiar with botany and the way genetics works, if this is true, I'm wondering if this means that individual plants of the Sungold Select II will have all red cherries OR all orange ones, or can the plants of this selection have both colors on the same plant)

I can't predict what you'll get if they're saying what they have isn't genetically stable, but I can say that you won't get plants that have both red and orange fruits on the same plant.

There is NO place that sells OP seed that they produce them selves that will be 100% true and that's true of Baker Creek, Sandhill and many other places where they do produce most, but not ALL of their own seed.

Some places buy off the shelf wholesale, some subcontract out, some produce their own seed and some do a combo of those methods.

Baker Creek last year sold seeds for German Red strawberry which I know well b'c I first listed it in the SSE Yearbook. It wasn't GRS, it was a bottom heavy variety they got from Italy as it turned out, what one would usually call a piriform ( pear) type and there are many named ones of that type. They weren't the only ones who got that wrong variety from the same place in Italy but at other sites it was called Cuor di Bui which is a well known Italian heart variety and it was pulled from the Reimer's seed site ASAP.

Carolyn, who at least tries to help. Sigh.

Well, I guess i'll see the results of this also this year, as i'm growing a handful of Sungold Select II that I bought from Baker Creek. =)

- Steve

Okay, and thanks, Carolyn. You did help, of course. I won't be distressed if I get a red version of the Sungold Select II!

Actually, I was interested in the answers to those questions as they pertain to how close together I should plant the Select II and F1 versions of Sungold. If the Select II plants are likely to produce red cherries, I'd be able to tell the difference between that plant and the F1 by the fruit-colors. But not if the colors are the same. I should probably plant them in different beds anyway since it appears they might both have fruits that are similar, to prevent possible crossing, and because I'd like to know which is which.

I assumed that a single plant would not bear fruits of different colors at maturity, but my assumptions get me into trouble sometimes, particularly if I'm grossly ignorant about something!

Carolyn, you posted:
There is NO place that sells OP seed that they produce them selves that will be 100% true and that's true of Baker Creek, Sandhill and many other places where they do produce most, but not ALL of their own seed.

So am I reading this correctly that I should expect to see some variance among plants in all of the tomato varieties I purchased from Baker Creek?

I also have Sungold Select II as well as Aunt Ruby's German Green Cherry, and both mention that they are not 100% stable yet and maybe produce red cherries vs. the orange or green....

Carolyn, you posted:
There is NO place that sells OP seed that they produce them selves that will be 100% true and that's true of Baker Creek, Sandhill and many other places where they do produce most, but not ALL of their own seed.
So am I reading this correctly that I should expect to see some variance among plants in all of the tomato varieties I purchased from Baker Creek?

I also have Sungold Select II as well as Aunt Ruby's German Green Cherry, and both mention that they are not 100% stable yet and maybe produce red cherries vs. the orange or green....
****

I said that no place that sells OP seed that they produce themsleves, and I should have added or subcontract to others or buy wholesale off the shelf, will ( always) have 100% true seed for all varieties, and that includes Baker Creek as well as many other places that obtain OP seed by any of those methods.

No, it doesn't mean that you'll have variances in plants, I assume you mean of the same variety, but it does mean that some varieties that you or others buy will not be what they are supposed to be. The percentage is not great, but it does exist and always will.

That's b'c of cross pollination problems and the only way to ensure pure seed is to bag blossoms or to grow different varieties at great isolation distances from each other and few commercial places have the room to do such geographic isolation or the time to bag enough blossoms to get the amount of seed they need for retail sale.

AS for Aunt Ruby's German Green Cherry, yes, that one is known to be genetically unstable and several listers in the SSE Yearbook have noted that and Jere Gettle was one of those listers who mentioned it.

Cross pollination can be a real problem. To date I've probably listed upwards of 500 to 700 varieties in the SSE Yearbook and of those I know of less than 20 that turned out to be X pollinated. The problem is that when processing fruits for seed, if you don't bag blossoms or use geographic isolation, you have to be sure to use many fruits off one plant, bettr still many fruits off two plants of the same variety, well, you get the drift here, LOL, so that any seeds that are X pollinated get diluted out. I've sent out 100's of seed for a single variety and a X pollinated one didn't show up until those hundreds had been grown so all who got those hundreds got true seeds until the X pollinated one(s) started showing up. It's really just a statistical game, if you will.

Right now there is one place selling some great OP tomato v arieties, many hard to get, and they have the room to actually DO good geographic isolation, so I'm hopeful that the majority of their seeds will be true. And that's Glecklerseedmen. com where Adam, the grandson of the original owner has revived the family business and his father is his mentor. They used to produce seeds for TGS and many other places until they closed down in 1994 and many of us who knew them back in the 80's, and they started selling OP seed in the 40's, are delighted to have them back again. Feedback so far is great in terms of service as well as price, so I'm hopeful for them. And this summer Adam will be growing out many more new ones to add to his list for 2011.

If you do a search here you'll find that their name is the title of a thread that Ami, meisenbacher, posted last year and called to the attention of folks here that they were back in business.

I hope I've answered your questions and if I haven't please let me know here in this thread and I'll try again. ( smile)

Carolyn

Thanks Carolyn, I think I just misinterpreted what you said. I kind of got scared for a second I was going to have mutant tomatoes running amok in my back yard :)

There are a few of us on here that are doing comparison runs of Sungold F1 vs. Sungold Select. I'm hoping that the latter version is good or better so I can save seeds.

now for the 64 thousand dollar question. If I save seeds from the Sungold Select II that I grew out of baker creek seed and selected from plants that produced orange cherries, is there still a possibility it could possibly revert back to a red cherry with some of the seeds?

now for the 64 thousand dollar question. If I save seeds from the Sungold Select II that I grew out of baker creek seed and selected from plants that produced orange cherries, is there still a possibility it could possibly revert back to a red cherry with some of the seeds?

*****

Since the seeds that Baker Creek is selling for Sungold Select II they say are not genetically stable, then yes, you could save seeds from an orange fruited plant and those seeds could give you red fruited plants as well I suppose of orange fruited plants as well.

But as I said above Sungold Select I and II as well as Big Sungold and now Big Sungold Select were released by Reinhard Kraft as genetically stable and I haven't seen anyone who has had any instability problems with the first two,or at least indicated so either in the SSE Yearbook or online at the places where I read/post, and the last two are too new to say much about but I also expect them to be stable as well. The seeds that I was sent from Reinhard last Spring from his saved seed were quite stable and gave me and the person who does most of my seed production for me what was expected. So I'mmk just have to see how they do fro9m those who got my savied seeds from it that I offered in my seed offer and those seeds are the same ones I'll be sending out for any SSE requets and also sending to the commercial places where I do send seeds for trial.

Carolyn

If Baker Creek is selling something labeled as Sungold Select II, that is not genetically stable... then it ain't Sungold Select II. (It might be a cross, it might even be the hybrid Sungold, but it ain't SG Select II!)

I've grown it for 2~3 years and have never had any variation.
Which tells me that what RK sent out was/is genetically stable.

It's very easy to distinguish Sungold F1 from Sungold Select II. Sungold F1 is much fruitier tasting. SG Select II has more of a tomatoey taste, but is closer to the
Sungold F1 than Sungold Select is.

Lee

Lee, this is directly from the Baker Creek seed catalog. I think I will email them and ask about the confusion because I have this particular seed I ordered from them:

This is a selection from the regular Sungold tomato, sent to us by Reinhard Kraft of Germany. This is one of the tastiest orange cherry tomatoes out there! This little cherry was the favorite of many of our staff last summer; we love the sweet tangy taste! This variety is not completely stable and a few plants still produced red fruit.

Here is a link that might be useful: Baker Creek Description

AS for Aunt Ruby's German Green Cherry, yes, that one is known to be genetically unstable and several listers in the SSE Yearbook have noted that and Jere Gettle was one of those listers who mentioned it.Now, I see no Gold Standard in toms (or any other living thing) that be homozygous. Gettle is wrong to portray that human being's intentional plant hybridization is wicked or corrupt. It happens all the time naturally.
On the SGS II I may try a few. And if a plant produces a red berry, I would not get it given that RK sent him the seed stock and JG eschews hybrids. But that would be OK with me.

Reg

I think it's good to remember that someone may send you seeds for a variety and it's a perfectly stable variety, but when you grow out the plants there's always a possibility of Cross pollination, mutation , etc., and so the seeds you save from those initial seeds may not be genetically stable.

I can't say that's what might have happened with the Baker Creek seeds b'c I don't know the specifics. But getting red fruited plants from Sungold Select II I don't think I ever remember reading about from feedback. Getting red fruited plants from saved seed from the hybrid Sungold F1 is common and thus getting some red fruited plants from volunteers of Sungold F1 is also common.

I get many varieties from Reinhard Kraft b'c after I fell in Dec of 2004 I could no longer do the huge growouts that I used to do, so I concentrate on growing varieties new to all or most and until this year he always managed to get some new ones and we'd trade seeds with my new ones.

To date there has only been one variety, actually over a many year period of time since I've known Reinhard for many many years, that was not exactly as he described it ( in German), and it wasn't an instability situation. It was a variety that he described as red and turned out to be pink when some of the seeds were grown out. That's not unusual b'c such epidermis mutations are rather common.

A red tomato has a yellow epidermis and if the gene for that mutates to a clear epidermis the fruit is then pink. That's really the only observable difference between a red and pink tomato, and all you need to do is to peel off a piece of the epidermis and hold it up to the light to tell the color. As controls I like to do a known red and a known pink at the same time. Such mutations are spontaneous, permanent, heritable mutations; no genetic instability. I have several varieties that I keep in both the red and pink forms but I share seeds only of the color that was described for the variety originally.

Carolyn

Hi Anney,

I have my first Sungold Select II ripening now and it looks pretty red to me. I gave plants to a couple of my brothers so it'll be interesting to see how theirs turn out.

BTW, I got my seeds from Baker Creek.

And my Sungold Select IIs are orange just like the F1s. There is a tiny bit of difference in the taste but I'm not sure how much, since the taste changes if they're more or less ripe. And I got the SS II seeds in a trade.

Maybe the differences will be more obvious after the two varieties begin producing at their peak -- they're just getting started, my first tomatoes except for the Opalkas.

Also watching my Sungold Select II from Bakers Creek. One of mine is orange and gave me my first taste of the summer. I did notice the heads up in the catalog but am willing to gamble. Also got the Black Cherry from BC and have one plant producing a larger egg shape fruit not yet ripe as mentioned in another post.

How much bigger is Big Sungold Select than Sun Gold? Like a third bigger? Double the size? Are they as productive? As Early? TIA

On my plants, they're the same size, bigdaddy. I'm holding out with the expectation that the F1s are slightly sweeter though. Gosh, they're like vegetable candy! The taste of the SS IIs are nearly as good to me, but you CAN tell a slight difference.

How much bigger is Big Sungold Select than Sun Gold? Like a third bigger? Double the size? Are they as productive? As Early? TIA

*****

Big Sungold Select I'd estimate is maybe 1/3 larger than the F1 Sungold, at least as grown last summer in my tomato patch, seeds from Reinhard. I could look in the 2010 SSE YEarbook to see what others might have gotten with it, but my stacks of Yearbooks collapsed, LOL, and I'm not in the mood to try to straighten everything out.

And for sure the yield was very high, probably the same or close to that of the F1.

Carolyn, who does find the taste of BSS and the F1 are not quite the same; lack of the extreme fruitness of the F1 although very good tasting anyway. And the BSS fruits are orange from the get go as opposed to the F1's where there's a temporal gradation of color change with the orange fruits being the last to ripen on a single truss.

Oh, sorry, bigdaddy! I mistook your question, so look to Carolyn's answer, not mine. I'm growing only Sungold Select II alongside the Sungold F1.

OK Thanx Carolyn! I think I will grow it next year. Also, Do they split as readily as Sun Gold? BTW, rooting for Maria Sharapova to upset Serena...

Most seeds from Reinhards creations do not come directly from Reinhard but via Manfred Hahm. I have grown most of his select series and they have always come true even with saved seeds from me grown by other growers. I purchased seeds for Cherokee Purple from Baker Creek and ended up with a determinate red slicer. So don't believe everything the variety description says or the purity of seed from Baker Creek. Ami

A twofer for Ami and Big Daddy

True Ami that most of Reinhard's releases he sends to Manfred who offers them off Reinhard's webpage, but there's a few of us, I'm one of them, who have known Reinhard for many years so each year I send him the best of my grow outs and he does the reverse, and sometimes he asks if I can find this or that for him and I've been able to do that as well. But since Reinhard gives the seeds to Herr Hahm there should be no differences in seeds from Herr Hahm as opposed to Reinhard himself.

I must ask Reinhard when next I e-mail him if Manfred does any seed production from the seeds that Reinhard gives him, which is something I don't know for a fact. B'c if there is then I don't know as I can say that the two sources would be eqivalent.

Big Daddy, since Sungold F1 doesn't split that badly for me , and since I've only grown BSS last year and got no splitting in a rainy year, I don't have a definitive answer. LOL

But I have one re Maria and Serena and my feeling is that Maria is still very young and Serena is quite a bit older, so Maria has many years to still win Wimbledon again, and Serna doesn't. I'll be glued to my TV this week watching all the matches, that you can believe. LOL

Carolyn