Seeds from the same tomato fruit

12 years ago

Last year a bough a tomato at a Farmer's market. I do not know what it was and whether it was a hybrid or a heirloom. I saved the seeds and planted one plant this year. The fruits look different from the fruit they came from, but they are awesome in looks and flavor (last post of "post your tomato pictures, Part 3). I guess the fruit I bought was a hybrid and I got segregation of the characteristics. My question is whether all the original seeds from the fruit I bought will produce similar plants or whether there is genetic variation within a single fruit? If i want to grow a similar plant again, am I better off selecting seeds from the new plant, or will I expect additional genetic segregation?

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Comments (3)

cygnwulf
12 years ago
It's easily possible for different seeds from the same hybrid fruit to segregate in to completely different offspring. OP tomatoes don't have much variation between their genetic pairs, that's why they breed true, it doesn't matter which one you get from the pair it's basically the same. Hybrid tomatoes have completely different gene pairs, and every seed re-picks one half of them (I'm dumbing it down a bit here but that's basically how it works). When two different F2 plants have very different characteristics that are both favorable, you can actually end up with multiple segregated lines from the same cross. I've seen extreme examples where they ended up with 3 lines with completely different colors as the end result of the segregation and selection.
That being said, if this is only an F2 cross, even the seed of the plants you grew this year is not guaranteed to be exactly the same, you could see additional fluctuation in your next generation. Most hobby breeders find that 'surprise' aspect actually one of the more exciting parts of the process.
carolyn137
12 years ago
I'll put it a slightly different way.

The fruit you bought could have been an OP that resulted from natural cross pollination if blossoms were not bagged or plants isolated geographically. All the seeds in that fruit could have been X pollinated or part of them or even one seed. It all depends on how many ovules in the tomato ovary had not been self fertilized by the pollen of that blossom leaving unfertilized ovules for X pollination by the alien pollen.

Seeds in a true breeding OP variety are not always identical b/c there's genetic diversity within a variety and those who have eyes to see can see slight differences in internode lengths, foliage, fruit maturation times and more. Most of us wouldn't see those slight differences and it's mainly hybridizers who can do so.

If the variety you bought was an F1 hybrid, your saved F2 seeds could give you anything depending on the parentage of the F1 hybrid. And modern hybrids can have up to 8 parental inputs, 4 in each breeding line.

So putting out one plant won't give you the range of possibilities to be seen.

But if you like what you see then by all means save F3 seeds from that one plant and next year try to plant out more than one plant b'c if you're looking for just the one you like it's going to take quite a few plants to find the one you like. Anmd youmight well find others in that growout that you like, so you can save seeds from those as well, and keep saving seeds from your separate selections until ALL seeds from one selection give rise to the same plants and fruits. Which can take from 3 to 10 F generations, that's 3 to 10 years for those who can't grow two crops/year. And when you've done that you've got a genetically stable OP variety and you can name it.

Been there, done that, it's lots of fun if you have the room to do large growouts.

Hope that helps.

Carolyn
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carolyn137
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I completely forgot to link you to the best discussion, also illustrated, of genetic segregation that I know of, which is what you're faced with with the plant and fruit you like which is either from a cross pollinated fruit, so you could have an F1 hybrid that you like, or from a fruit that you bought that already was an F1 hybrid.

In either case you could be working with an initial hybrid and the link below is one of the best I know of that will help in understanding what genetic segregation involved as well as much more.

Click on CULTURE and then scroll down to the appropriate link.

Be sure to look around the site for much more information and many excellent links.

Carolyn

Here is a link that might be useful: Keith Mueller's excellent website

Seeds from the same tomato fruit

Comments (3)

cygnwulf

carolyn137

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carolyn137

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