Many folks seem to like Rutgers for both yield and flavor which, like many prior F1 hybrids, is now available as OP seed. I'm not so sold on any of these since the cost of F1 seed is insignificant if you get outstanding yields. When you ponder the yield advantage of a variety that may be $1 per seed a single days harvest may offset that seed cost. You may ask for hard supporting evidence and I can't give you any. I just know that some F1 varieties are well worth the seed cost for me. Similarly, for your second q, I believe flavor is somewhat improved by prolific production, at least within any single variety. The faster the time that a tomato takes to produce ripe fruit the better the flavor. High concentrations of sunlight reaching the plant speed photosynthesis, resulting in higher sugar levels throughout the plant and fruit. Higher heat speeds the ripening process. The plant as viewed like as factory is most efficient when every facet is working at peak levels and then is when the final product is at its best. I use greenhouse for season extension and I can tell from tasting experience that fall ripened tomatoes, from the same plants as summer picked, just don't have the same flavor. Those fruits take longer to ripen than the fruits of peak summer production. By that time some plants have been producing for 5 months and some are barely producing at all. When those "slackers" finally crank out a ripe tomato it has the same comparative loss for flavor as any other variety.

Since I was the one who made the post, I feel like I should chime in about all the negative comments. Geesh, people, it's just a quiz...and it doesn't collect personal information. And it doesn't promote anything...from what I can tell, it indicates that hybrids have superior disease resistance and reliability and that heirlooms have superior flavor. Anybody want to contest that? OK, I admit, it's very basic, way too basic for most people on this listserv. But that's no reason to trash it. And that it's made by a seed company? Horrors! How dare they want to sell seeds! This is the kind of attitude Wikipedia has...they don't let companies provide information...and yet in today's world, often it's commercial interests that ARE providing the best information. Does anyone think that Extension websites are necessarily a better source of gardening info than, say, Dave's Garden website? C'mon people... Here is a link that might be useful: Tomato Growers Quiz #1

Seysonn, I've tried twice to do a post here with links to show you how wrong you are about that article as well as Jeff himself, and much more. But I can't get one link to transfer, but I'll be back to try again. I've linked to that article many times at many places and you have the distinction of being the ONLY person who has ever called it useless. I told everyone to use Jeff's article along with the FAQ here at GW that Dave lnked to. If you had done that you wouldn't be complaining about a10ft isolation distance, as you did, b'c I already posted above that Jeff's distances were too conservative IMO but he was doing seed production for a commercial reason. Right now Wimbledon tennis is calling me so it's out to theTV for that and if storms don't knock out the power as they did two night ago, I'll be back. In the meantime why don't you Google SESE and take a look and thus see that the site IS for home gardeners,not for large scale commercial farmers.And Jeff wrote that article when he owned SESE for the home gardener. Two folks from SESE visisted me yesterday, a very vigorous chat for almost 5 hours. They are doing a 2 week tour of many seed places here in the NE and that b'c they want to see how others do this and that b'c they are ones who want to always learn more, which is a good thing to do in life in general. Carolyn

On the OP tom seed saving bidness, an obvious but largely unaddressed issue here is one of proper identification. This is important if one wants to reprise the same cult from one's own saved seeds. I am no paragon of virtue on it, but I try to keep track of the tom cults. ***** Reg, I'm not following you entirely on this but I think you are saying be sure that you have properly IDed the variety ( not cults, aka cultivars) that you are taking fruits from to save seed. If so, time after time I have urged folks to NEVER plant a tomato plant unless the person knows the variety traits as to plant habit, indeterminate or determinate, leaf form, RL or PL or other, fruit shape and size and color. A lot of casually traded seed turns out not to be what the seed recipient expected either b'c of crossed seed or b'c the person who saved the seeds did not properly ID the variety being used for seed saving and the seed traded is pure but not the right variety. Carolyn