Has anyone had success in creating a landrace that is resistant to early blight? I’ll start in 2026 but this is one of my goals for my tomato landrace. If anyone has already had success that has seeds available that I can add to my mix, let me know. Thanks!
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I don’t think I get early blight, at least not bad enough to matter, though I could be wrong. I am getting pretty good at making crosses though so, I would be willing to offer my services for some initial crosses free of charge as long as I can make the crosses with some of my own open-source parents. I’ll look into obtaining some appropriate germplasm. One methodology to try might be to do as large as possible a grow out of the promiscuous tomato project which incorporated quite a few accessions of Solanum habrochaites and one of Solanum penellii. Marglobe Marglobe Tomato - Victory Seed Company which I believe is an heirloom or early modern is supposed to have some resistance. As does Norduke Norduke Tomato - Victory Seed Company. Royal Red Cherry might be useful Royal Red Cherry Tomato - Victory Seed Company
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I’m not sure if I get early blight either, or late blight. Need to learn more about how to tell the difference. But I can say that in the field where I am growing this year, the sungolds and early girls (not mine) are all dying about now, while William’s strain of promiscuous tomatoes is showing only a little damage, and Joseph’s line of obligate outcrossers are showing no blight yet. Last year those did get quite a bit of blight both in my field and other growers (some seeds came from humid kentucky), so some selection pressure may have helped.
They are all in separate patches in the same 2 acre field, and mine were planted a bit later than the hybrid varieties. The William line is growing in the same row where the Joseph line was last year, so there would likely be spores present. The Joseph line is currently growing in a row where there haven’t been tomatoes for at least a couple years.
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Cool! Good to hear that they are doing well. I crossed in a few different things that may have more utility for others than for myself. I think frost is the main enemy of tomatoes here. Though I do think they get some minor diseases that just don’t matter much right before frost. Early blight and late blight sound worse. Though they might be present at a low level on occasion even here- just suppressed by the drier climate.
Alternaria alternata resistance
The closest thread on the Open-Source Seed Initiative forum to this one is an interesting one above. By Steph S. of Newfoundland Canada.
This page from Cornell Disease-resistant tomato varieties | Cornell Vegetables suggests the following might be useful amongst genetics I may still have on hand.
Brandywine
Celebrity F1 (Several different generations)
Cloudy Day F1 (May have saved some F2 seed)
Coyote
Geranium Kiss
Homestead (For me via Home Stoop)
Indigo Rose
Matt’s Wild
If I add Black Cherry to that list which Steph suggests is working well, I have quite a few things to make crosses between.
I have a cross with Matt’s Wild and a couple crosses with Home Stoop made this year.
I think I should add Mexico Midget to the list. I have it and its descendant Dwarf Eagle Smiley. My 314 cross is descended from Dwarf Eagle Smiley and I made 11 new crosses with 314 this year, Including Matt’s Wild x 314. So, I might already have a few crosses that need testing for Early Blight and Alternaria resistance.
Last summer I grew Joseph’s line of promiscuous outcrossers and noticed (1) they seemed to tolerate the leaf blights that come late in the season when the plants get stressed better than the other tomatoes, including some of my own breeding lines and (2) when fall frost came they seemed less affected than the others, but hard frosts did eventually bring them to a stop at the end of the the season. I don’t grow Early Girl as I don’t care for the flavor of that one. I do grow SunSugar and have some 50/50 crosses with other cherry sized tomatoes.
One last thing – one of @Joseph_Lofthouse 's tomatoes had the absolutely most BRILLIANT RED 
fruits that I have ever seen. Many decades ago I had a line with Heinz 2653 as one parent that had really nice red tomatoes, but this one was even better and brighter than that. (I have saved seed of all of Joseph’s plants separately so I can regrow that eye popper next summer as well.) I just grabbed my harvest notebook and see that I wrote “Beautiful vivid Red color” for that plant. I had 27 plants of that line.
Some of the varieties I sent you this year came from two generations of disease-tolerance selection in Kentucky, South Carolina, and northern California. Hoping they thrive for you. I sent seeds to 3 growers in your area, so looking forward to expanding the evaluation of their tolerance.
Too funny! I have spent years trying to eliminate the red-colored trait in these tomatoes.
It will be interesting to see how they do. I’m planning on treating them like I’m a beginner with very little knowledge on how to grow things. That’s what I did with the seed Anna sent me last spring. That allows me to see what the genetics can really do. It appears as though that line might have a little bit of frost tolerance. The squash vines (C. maxima) right next were killed by the frost. Also the vines had very little blight issues on the leaves although on the bottom leaves I could tell they were needing Potassium and the soil here is low in that nutrient.
Actually those 27 plants did have some orangish colored tomatoes. One plant looked like SunSugar and there was at least one that had red and yellow cells in the fruit that made it look orange at first glance. There were a couple that were green at harvest as well.
One of the ancestors of the Profoundly Promiscuous and Totally Tasty Tomatoes project came from 11,000 feet in the Andes mountains. In my garden, it survived 2 months in the fall, after all other tomatoes turned to dust. It finally succumbed in mid-November.
Another ancestor won my cold/frost tolerance trials. It didn’t show tolerance to frost as a seedling, but it grew exceedingly well in cold weather.
That’s interesting. I wish I could find that frost resistance in Winter Squash. The only vegetables I am able to grow here in Minnesota in January are Snow Peas, Iceberg Lettuce and Icicle Radishes (oops). Actually I am planning a greenhouse for next winter. It will be what they call a Deep Winter Greenhouse or DWG. It won’t be very big but it will have a woodstove for heating and will be attached to my tiny cabin which is 8’ x 12’. Yes, I live in something that size.
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