Can't speak to the peppers as they always taste fine to me but then I don't usually eat the seeds. :)

But with tomatoes, I've never been able to look at seeds I've saved and say, yep, this one crossed. Granted, some seeds look healthier than others, better developed, more mature, better color. But "crossed"? Not in my experience. But then the incidence of crossing is so minimal anyway that I honestly don't worry about it. JMO

Dave

Not sure I exactly understand the question ...

I've been growing out Glory, a hybrid tomato from Peto. The seeds saved from some of the F2s and F3s are significantly larger than the seeds I saved from the F1 tomatoes. I mean you can even tell it when eating tomatoes from the different generations.

I've also noticed some seed size differences between some of my hand-crossed tomatoes from generation to generation as well ... particularly when I cross a cherry with wild genes to a larger-seeded tomato.

However, I never noticed any difference in seed size between self-pollinated tomatoes and hand-pollinated crosses on the same vine.

Bill

So since the seeds have different genetic material in them, could you tell a crossed tomato if you were familiar with their seeds?

I don't think so.

The genetic material you speak of is DNA and the DNA is molecular in size and is tightly wound up inside the endosperm of the seed, any tomato seed. You couldn't tell the the genes were altered unless the DNA was sequenced by some fancy molecular restriction sequence tests.

The various layers that makle up the seed coat are the same for all mature tomato seeds.

And processing seed for any one variety can give you a range of tomato seed size.

So you're asking if a big seeded variety crosses with a small seeded variety can you tell that the seeds are crossed just by looking at them. Then it's my opinion that you can't do that.

BTW, the bit about the crossed pepper seed has been diccussed for eons and unless one eats the seeds of crossed peppers ( a sweet pepper X a hot pepper) in the same season that the cross occurred, as one can do with crossed sweet corn and tell the difference, one can't tell it happened and most folks remove the seeds and eat the vegetative part.

The midribs of some sweet peppers under certain circumstances can be bitter and many folks just assume that the sweet pepper crossed with a hot pepper, and that's not what happens.

Actually quite a few years ago when this came up I contacted a pepper hybridizer who someone had referred me to for an answer and at that time he asked me to ask online for anyone who had a sweet pepper that routinely had bitter midribs to contact him. And I did post that as he had asked me to.

Carolyn