Two tomato seeds

[igenlode]

When I cut my tomatoes in half, the seeds are still basically undeveloped.


After a lot of digging around with my thumbnail I did manage to find two whole seeds during my latest attempt...

(The yellowish thing in the middle of the frame is not a viable seed but a blob of jelly with an un/under-developed seed fragment at one end :-(

An interesting suggestion: selecting for fruit development in cool conditions indirectly selects for seedlessness. So if you keep taking fruit from the plants that produce best without the need for greenhouse conditions, you may be inadvertently selecting for plants that develop fruit without being fertilised...

https://growingfruit.org/t/seedless-tomato-learning-experience/44578

It can be frustrating when I want to save seed to find that many of the fruit have no seed at all. This usually happens early in the year when temperatures are cool and pollinators are sparse.

Wild species of tomatoes have a gene “S” that causes self-incompatibility. This gene prevents self fertilization which means any seed produced are from a cross with another tomato plant that does not carry the same S gene. I’ve grown a couple of S. Habrochaites plants that demonstrated this gene. Many of the plants would produce fruit because they also carried one of the parthenocarpic genes. This raises seed saving frustration to the nth level because you have to grow two different plants that carry different S genes and the weather has to cooperate and the pollinators have to do their job. If all the stars align, seed are produced.