Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Headgardener22 on August 21, 2015, 17:03
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Like many others, I've been intrigued by the Crimson Crush tomato and am going to try to overwinter some cuttings to grow them next year because they are F1 Hybrids and so "won't breed true".
However, that set me thinking. Why won't they breed true or is it just that they are less likely to breed true than creating an F1 hybrid from defined parent. I then found Big Beef at another website where it was described as "a de-hybridized version of an American favorite (sic)". So obviously it is possible its just a question of what the chances are of a de-hybridised variant keeping the blight resistance.
So, my plan is to keep some seed from a number of tomatoes and grow some next year outdoors at the allotment where I have always had blight to see if any of them survive.
What are my chances?
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The offspring of F1 varieties inherit some of their parents' characteristics, but not all.
You might get one that is blight resistant, but it also needs to flower well and taste good.
If you have lots of space and infinite patience, then experiment to your heart's content. You never know what you might get!
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Did you see my post on your other crimson Crush thread?
http://chat.allotment-garden.org/index.php?topic=120412.msg1429779#msg1429779
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I think the thing with CC is the purported blight resistance, and that resistance is a combination of 2 very specific genes - PH2 and PH3. Previous blight resistant varieties have only had one of these so the resistance has supposedly increased in CC. Tom Wagner, who has bred a lot of varieties we grow now, is as I understand it, experimenting with crosses that also have PH2 and PH3, but the varieties he has created are still stabilising.
i'm not sure how much blight mutates. If it does so readily it might mean any dehybridising is a bit pointless. I don't say this to try and put you off experimenting though - it might well be worth a go, particularly if you can grow them alongside your F1 clones as a comparator.