I develop some sorts of micro tomatoes, the crops themselves attain about 10cm (4 inch) tall. I additionally develop one other number of tomato with woolly leaf and black fruit. So I made a decision to try to cross them and intention for a micro tomato plant with woolly foliage and blue/black fruit.
For just a few years I maintain which means to cross the 2, and issues maintain stopping this or I’m not profitable in making this cross or all my seedlings die. Final yr I tried to make this cross once more.
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| One in every of these seedlings is clearly totally different than the others |
I’m not nice at cross pollinating tomatoes, my fingers are much less regular and my eyesight will not be as eager because it as soon as was, plus I generally emasculate flowers which are a bit too previous and have already shed some pollen.
I made a decision to make use of Micro Tom because the seed guardian. Any self-pollinated seedlings could be micro dwarf, any F1 crops shall be common sized and have non-woolly foliage. It ought to be straightforward to see inside days of the seeds germinating if my cross had labored.
The three seedlings beneath had been collected from Micro Tom. Two are micro dwarf, and one is clearly bigger. This one is a results of my cross.
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| Micro Tom x Woolly Blue tomato F1 |
As soon as they grew a bit bigger this cross, between a dwarf and a micro-dwarf, is certainly one of my largest tomato seedlings. Hybrid vigour means the F1 grows effectively.
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| F1 hybrid vigour |
The F1 crops will all be massive crops, none shall be micro dwarf. I want to avoid wasting loads of seed from this F1 plant and develop as many seedlings as I can because the F2 is the place I’ll begin to see segregation.
The F2 crops shall be a mixture of massive crops and micro dwarf, every of them could have a mixture of common leaf and woolly leaf, every of them could have a mixture of totally different colored fruit.
Given the genes the guardian inventory had, there’s a 1 in 256 likelihood of getting the plant I would like from the F2.
Rising 256 crops doesn’t assure what I’m after, so I have to plant many a whole bunch of seeds. I can cull something that’s not micro dwarf at cotyledon stage. I ought to then have the ability to cull something that’s not woolly on the first true leaf stage. This may go away me with a extra manageable variety of crops to develop out to see if there are any excessive anthocyanin.
To be trustworthy, I’m eager to develop out and stabilise any micro woolly traces even when they don’t seem to be excessive anthocyanin as I feel that micro woolly tomatoes sound like enjoyable. There could also be some attention-grabbing issues to return out of this cross.
The seed guardian was Micro Tom, the smallest tomato plant on the earth.
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| Micro Tom tomato below 4cm tall |
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| Micro Tom tomatoes |
The pollen guardian has woolly foliage and excessive anthocyanin fruit. It additionally has just a few different attention-grabbing genes at play, so there’s loads of potential for attention-grabbing woolly foliage micro tomatoes.
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| Black fruited tomato |
I haven’t got a lot else to say about these simply but as it’s only a seedling. Hopefully it flowers and fruits in season and I can save seeds.
Stabilising micro dwarf tomatoes is a bit quicker than regular tomatoes as a result of I can normally get 2 or generally 3 generations per yr out of them, whereas I can usually solely get one era per yr of bigger tomatoes.
