Ive never heard of a hyb. manalucie, but manalucie op is my favorite tom., it cant be beat in zone 8,tx. by a hyb. or op tom. Maybe they made a mistake. bill

Bill,

Thanks.

Maybe there isn't a hybrid version. I did some more internet digging, and in some discussions, the plant is listed as "Manalucie-F", meaning, in that discussion, tolerant to fusarium wilt. Maybe some seed companies added a "1" after it, making it appear to be a hybrid.

It's on my list for next year in my quest to find tomatoes that produce better in heat/humidity and tomatoes that aren't likely to develop BER.

I did read that Manalucie is easily cross-pollinated by other tomatoes, knocking out its tolerance for disease. Gray leaf-spot fungus in particular was mentioned. See the PDF link below.

But all that said, it sounds like a great tomato for Southern gardeners.

Here is a link that might be useful: Contamination of Manalucie Tomatoes

Manalucie is over fifty years old. It was developed as part of a breeding program but without seeing the original packaging, product description or marketing notes it is impossible to know if the word 'hybrid' was ever part of its name.

I just looked at the Reimer's catalogue, they're charging $2.50 for a packet of seeds--it's the same price as so many of their OP listings.

Caveat emptor.

Here is a link that might be useful: IFAS Circular #1440

Trudi

I noticed their charge for the seeds, too, and wondered why they'd sell a hybrid for the same cost as OPs. Their other hybrids are more expensive.

So I guess their Reimer's terrible customer service record is equaled by their erroneous listing of plant characteristics. (I am convinced there's no hybrid version of it now.)

Anney, there is no F1 Manalucie that I know of. Why Reimer's continues to confuse issues is beyond me. Well, not really b'c I get it, I really do.

I've linked to an article written by Dr. Jay Scott about the accomplishments of the U of FL Tomato Breeding station. Manalucie was bred there and released in 1953 and it was an important step forward at the timne b'c it had "resistance" against leaf mold and "field" resistance against Early Blight ( A. solani) One of the earliest places to offer seed was Gleckler's in 1958 and I'm pretty sure I talked about them starting back up again this year here at GW but if I didn't I can and will. Not that they are offering Manalucie now, just that historically they were probably the first place to offer it commercially.

I don't think others have noted that there's any particular tolerance to Early Blight which leaves us with all the claims made at various other web sites such as resistant to BER ( no variety is), stands high heat better ( lots of foliage), but heat tolerance these days is more often related to pollen that doesn't destruct as readily as others in high sustained heat.

The article was written in 1998 so what's said about Manalucie by Jay Scott I believe is very true. And I don't see any mention about Fusarium either.

Perhaps Manalucie-F refers to the fact it was bred in Florida.

It's one of the many older commercial varieties and we grew it on the farm where I was raised, in NYS, along with Valiant and New Yorker and Rutgers and the like.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: U of FL cultivars; Manalucie

Hype is a big part of marketing, the more succesful the hype the more you can sell, but being as Reimer's is not charging more for the product I would assume they've got some dunderheads who don't do any fact checking.

Also, the internet is a yin yang experience where you can get great knowledge but unfortunately, without fact checking, you can also get a lot of old dogma. Underpaid and/or non-caring employees just do copy and paste of info listed elsewhere so there is little improving of the populist knowledge base.

Thanks, Carolyn. I was interested in whether Florida breeders have developed anything new since the article you linked was published. I could find information on only a very few cultivars that the Florida Foundation Seed Producers, Inc. has developed, and at the time the piece was written, only one was being offered commercially. Jay Scott was mentioned as one of the developers here, too. There may certainly be other new cultivars, but I haven't Googled enough to know.

Anyway, thank you for the historical information about Manalucie. I see that it doesn't list a tolerance for all the fusarium races. Given the similarity of disease occurrence between Florida and some of Georgia, it's probably a good idea to keep on the lookout for the plants that will produce the best here in Georgia by noticing what does well in Florida. I'd like to find the best OP cultivar for seed saving, though the newer hybrids may do even better for taste, production and disease tolerance. I certainly won't reject them, either!

I posted the link below at the end of another thread that's disappeared from sight, where research on a genetic component of BER appears to have been conducted by the University of Florida back in the 70s. Do you know if the research has been developed farther, has been supplanted by something else, or was meaningless?

Here is a link that might be useful: Monogenic resistance of tomato to blossom-end rot

I don't think anything makes me madder than seed companies that publish garbage about their offerings, wrong information, the same incorrect hype that others have put forward. They must copy stuff from cheap seed packets that have other cultivars than the ones they're listing. Fume, fume.

The internet has a lot of sites about various topics that do the same d&*% thing. A lot of misinformation gets spread around that way. Look at the freaking time I've spent trying to find an F1 Manalucie. Bollocks!

Anney, I don't see any reference to U of FL re BER in what you linked to; the two researchers appear to be Russian. And no, I've seen nothing more about that data and no more about any genes associated with BER although I do think there are some b'c of paste varieties being more susceptible than others to BER.

In the early 90's I did have a couple of chats with a Petoseed hybridizer/researcher who was at that time based in FL and he was looking at Root Knot Nematode resistances of both the neamtodes and the tomato varieties as well as looking at the pollen clumping problem that occurs in areas of high humidity. I don't know what became of that work in terms of possible introductions.

For the latest varieties from U of FL if I were you I'd take a good close look at the TGS catalog or website. Linda at TGS knows Dr. Scott well and she offers many of the newest of their varieties.

I don't know where you are in GA but I know a few folks in N GA, and south part of South Carolina who grow just about anything they want to as long as they get their plants in early in the season. Some also do a Fall crop as well.

Carolyn

Carolyn
Anney, I don't see any reference to U of FL re BER in what you linked to; the two researchers appear to be Russian.

Look at the URL. That's the Tomato Genetics Cooperative at the University of Florida.

http://tgc.ifas.ufl.edu/vol41/v41p13.html

And yes, I think the researchers are Russian. The tomato variety Gumbert they mention appears to be a Russian cultivar, too, according to other sites. I can't find it for sale in the US.

My tomatoes do all right, relatively speaking, throughout the entire growing season, though they've sometimes been brought down by various diseases by August.

And occasionally BER is a real pain in the butt, though I don't grow those again if they have it all summer.

Those that survive the heat and humidity usually put out one last effort as the fall nights cool off. By then I've usually had my fill of tomatoes, so it doesn't matter as much. Then. But later I wish I'd been able to put away more of them for the winter.

Maybe we shouldn't be too surprised if there are genetic resistances to disease or other problems in some tomatoes -- tomato plants have developed their own ways of coping and are grown all over the world.

Just a thought:

I've seen a few places that indicate resistance to fusarium races 1 and 2 with F1 and F2 abbreviations. Very confusing I think, and maybe copied and written up in other descriptions in the spot usually reserved for a hybrid F1 designation.