Plant progress

[igenlode]

The final surviving catch-up tomato has been catching up to the rest at great speed in terms of size, although it hasn't as yet shown any signs of putting out flowers, so I have repotted it into what will have to be its final pot, since I have none larger remaining, and now have my prescribed row of six towel-tomatoes (plus one Roma tomato) filling the front of the balcony :-)

I have managed to give away all but two of my various chilli seedlings, and now have one vigorously bushy plant that is seven inches high and on the verge of flowering, and another that put out a strong spurt of growth and is now five and a half inches high.

Comments

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>That's one reason why I'm trying to perpetuate this variety as a 'landrace'; it crops early and can often ripen its entire harvest before the end of the season,<<

I encourage people to develop landraces. :D

>>It's just unfortunate that I seem to have acquired this seedless trait along the way...!<<

You do have to be really careful about saving seeds from modern plants, because so many are deliberately sabotaged by their developers, which I consider a crime against humanity. Some references:

https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/landrace-gardening-food-security-biodiversity-zbcz1307/

https://lofthouse.com/cytoplasmic-male-sterility.phtml

https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/landrace-gardening-cytoplasmic-male-sterility-zbcz1402/

https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/landrace-gardening-zbcz1309z/

https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/genetic-engineering-cell-fusion-cms-zncz1402/

Re: Thoughts

[igenlode]

Ouch - that seems unbelievably risky, to deliberately and irreversibly breed sterility into your crop variety, at the presumable risk of contaminating the parent stock and making it impossible to propagate the species altogether. It's one thing to accidentally end up with a sterile product as a side-effect of breeding for something else (bananas, mules, London plane trees), but to do so merely to sabotage the theoretical competition strikes me as incredibly stupid and shortsighted :-(

Edit: apparently the idea is to make sure that the plants can *only* reproduce by hybridisation so that the desired cross-breeding can be guaranteed to produce the intended hybrid and not a naturally self-pollinated offspring. When breeding mules you don't want to accidentally end up with an undersized and ungovernable donkey!
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2021.817101/full


"For species without a nearby wild ancestor or close relative, no seeds will be produced" -- I don't think that can be the case for my tomatoes, because they *do* produce seeds, and those seeds appear to breed true to type once produced. Over the last two generations they have just started producing fruit that initially doesn't contain seed. I suppose it could be the case that they don't set seed until the neighbouring Roma tomatoes flower later on in the season to cross-pollinate them :-O

(But, as I said, they definitely appear to breed true to type; these are clearly not Roma tomatoes in shape, bush size or flowering time, while the Roma tomatoes also appear to be breeding true-- though I'm not too worried about that as those are a lot less desirable for my purposes, being too large and not so prolific or fruitful.)

You do have to be really careful about saving seeds from modern plants
Well, I've never *bought* tomato seed; I've always been given it, or been given spare seedlings (the Roma tomato was a rescue plant that I took pity on). This particular variety was just one that did very much better than all the various more standard commercial tomatoes that I'd been given previously, which were really only worth growing for amusement rather than in the hopes of obtaining any worthwhile sort of crop -- you would typically get perhaps half a dozen fruits per plant if you were lucky, which indeed is more or less what I get off the Roma variety.

So because this one is so well suited to my rather peculiar local conditions, and because I have no idea what variety it happens to be or how to get any more seed for it, I have been breeding them from the saved seed since 2020 and declining any further offers of other spare plants, in the hopes of developing tomatoes that positively thrive in the extremes of this environment! I don't think they can have developed male sterility in the fifth generation if they didn't have it in the first few -- at least not as a result of inheriting it from the two original parent plants.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Ouch - that seems unbelievably risky, to deliberately and irreversibly breed sterility into your crop variety, at the presumable risk of contaminating the parent stock and making it impossible to propagate the species altogether. <<

It is. It threatens the global food supply.

Important safety rules of gengineering include that you never design something that could cause a catastrophe if it spread, and you don't gengineer things in such a way that they can contaminate other genestocks. The same applies to other modes of manipulation.

>>Edit: apparently the idea is to make sure that the plants can *only* reproduce by hybridisation so that the desired cross-breeding can be guaranteed to produce the intended hybrid and not a naturally self-pollinated offspring. When breeding mules you don't want to accidentally end up with an undersized and ungovernable donkey!<<

What they are doing is not a safe and effective way to contain reproduction. It is getting loose and harming other crops / livestock / wildlife. Hybridization techniques do offer the desired control -- typically by removing the male parts from one parent and female parts from the other, but that is more work and people are lazy.

>>I have been breeding them from the saved seed since 2020 and declining any further offers of other spare plants, in the hopes of developing tomatoes that positively thrive in the extremes of this environment! I don't think they can have developed male sterility in the fifth generation if they didn't have it in the first few -- at least not as a result of inheriting it from the two original parent plants.<<

Possibilities:

* Damage from inbreeding, but that usually doesn't appear so fast.

* Spread of a trait that was present in small numbers from the beginning, expanded through selection.

* Introduction via pollinators.

Re: Thoughts

[igenlode]

To be honest this sounds like the sort of GMO engineering that is the reason why a lot of US produce is banned over here (where genetic modification is perceived as a vote-loser with the general public).

These were the alternative theories I came up with last year:
https://igenlode.dreamwidth.org/359369.html

I do now have some seed from a fruit that had developed a few but not all of them (which is precisely what happened last year, so I'm still expecting fully-developed seeds later on in the season), so I am saving that 'towel' just in case I *don't* get any more...

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> To be honest this sounds like the sort of GMO engineering that is the reason why a lot of US produce is banned over here <<

You're lucky.

>> These were the alternative theories I came up with last year: <<

Wow, that sounds frustrating. Especially since so many tomatoes have tight flowers that are hard for pollinators to service.

>> I do now have some seed from a fruit that had developed a few but not all of them (which is precisely what happened last year, so I'm still expecting fully-developed seeds later on in the season), so I am saving that 'towel' just in case I *don't* get any more...<<

I hope it works out for you.

Re: Thoughts

[igenlode]

I'm now getting the first fully-fertilised fruits showing up. But it's very odd.

I suppose it's possible that the plants *always* behaved like this, but I simply didn't notice until last year because I never previously managed to remember that I needed to save seed until late on in the season...!

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

Yay seeds! Yes, plants can be odd.

I picked the first cucumber today. :D