I respect that. Very true, ownership is important. I kind of hope making plant patents eventually becomes illegal, it feels off making patents on life but that’s just my philosophy/opinion.
That being said I also respect Norfolk for being very open with their Purple Tomato patent, allowing gardeners to breed with it & gardeners to save seeds. My problem is Norfolk can just eventually change the patent right? I just hope it isn’t a trap 30 years down the line, where they get you in & they revoke all your creations (Altho that kind of thing would be hard to enforce). Plus if the GMO Purple Tomato genes are in your landrace, you can’t sell it (Only trade without a profit, which I’m fine with respecting).
Ah I see… so the GMO Purple Tomato could be like a Trojan Horse in some aspects?
Yikes… , even for the risk of 1% GMO Genes contamination. Does this mean you will have to DNA test each seed you plant? Yea the genes will inevitably spread but doesn’t that also make it harder to enforce the patent? Will Feral Tomatoes that escape into the wild have Purple GMO Tomato Genetics too? What then?
If the Purple Tomato re-wilded, would that revoke the patent? Since you can’t patent naturally occurring species?
Fantastic! This is the kind of Out Side the box methods I like to do breeding with.
Makes me wonder if I can graft Purple Tomatillos onto Tomatoes in hopes that the truly pruple fruit color gets transfered into tomatoes? It would be considered Organic right?
By all Corn you mean all Zea spp. too like wild Teosintes? And even Gammagrass Tripsacum spp. which are crossable with Corn? If GMO Germaplasm is contaminating wild stock, how is that gonna be enforced? Nature doesn’t care about patents.
I agree, it’s not the same thing.
I do wonder if grafting is considered a traditional breeding method?
Certainly grafting created horizontal gene flow opportunities, especially with very plastid scions.
What about using Parasitic plants to move genes around? Say I graft Tomatoes onto Bittersweet Nightshade to make Tomatoes cold hardy? Or get this blue colored fruit trait into tomatoes via grafting & using parasitic plants?
It’s not technically GMO because it was done through natural means via the Parasitic plant right?
These are all examples of Truely Blue Fruits. The one on the left is a Bittersweet Nightshade species. The one in the middle is an edible fruit of the pepper tribe & the last one is edible mile-a-minute berries. I wonder which one can transfer the blue fruited genes into Tomatoes?
As a gardener I’m more concerned about the lack of choice and reversability the widescale growth of GMO corn creates, and less about patents.
No idea if it affects ancestors of corn, but sounds likely if they cross?
I’m cautious about some of the novel techniques described on this forum. They’re interesting intellectually. I’m not too turned off by trying to affect genes via grafting but there was another technique mentioned that sounded weird that I forgot about.
I suspect these techniques are not truly practicable. Feel free to prove me wrong, but I’ll keep making crosses in the meantime. Crossing is a tremendously valuable breeding tool. Also there is an truly enormous amount of tomato germplasm in South America and genebanks that requires nothing but patience to work with.
Yes, they want to normalize the use of the technique. Which is a trojan horse precisely because the various techniques we lump as GMO confer the longest lasting ownership of plant germplasm in the legal system. Also, if you work with that material- you might essentially be working for Norfolk. Anything you produce is their intellectual property- not yours and not part of the commons. Not for a very long time.
So many breeding combos & experiments have simply not been done/tried. Possibilities truly endless. This the kind of thing I would experiment with myself if I had Land to grow them on.
ah… so all of the feral Brassica napus escapes people find as wild edibles are simply offspring from Non-GMO cultivars? I’d imagine the GMO Patents would be a tightly controlled thing.
Perhaps, I want to combine these techniques with crossing. I’ve never played around with Parasitic Plants so I’m a noob in this aspect.
Agreed! Do you also do pollen mixing? Like mixing Lots of species pollens to pollinate a single ovary? Still I also feel grafting different tomato scions onto each other will encourage more crossing due to proximity & can soften Hybridization barriers for wider crosses.
That’s crazy!!! Work for Norfolk but don’t get paid???
Yea… that’s a real risk. They can always do the pull out game with patents. Hopefully they won’t cuz that’d look really bad.
Nope, many in agricultural areas are offspring from GMO cultivars and sometimes with the inserted genes in novel combinations. It hasn’t damaged the patents one bit.
Folks would likely let you borrow some land if you commit to organics and drop the GMO’s. Still I have land and I do normal crosses and it takes more time and energy than I have to do the breeding I do. I can’t do everything I’d like to.
Pollen mixing has been thrown around on the OSSI forum as a potential way to make difficult tomato crosses. So I have mixed- but didn’t get the results I wanted with Solanum peruvianum and Solanum penellii. However, I have met folks online who have had success where I failed- but not necessarily by employing pollen mixing. Crossing in a controlled environment can be very useful. Embryo rescue is also possible. Also it may be possible to make bridge crosses with say Solanum habrochaites and then with domestic tomato subsequently. However, even if someone decided to work exclusively with the relatively easy to work with Solanum habrochaites- you could spend years and cover many acres with work on that species cross alone. There may be more genetic diversity in some single accessions of Solanum habrochaites than in all domestic tomatoes combined. So, even if fancy techniques fail- straightforward techniques will yield hybrids that could keep you very busy for a long career in citizen science plant breeding. Also in my opinion, this ready availability of deep genetic diversity in tomatoes makes breeding with GMO’s in tomato less useful or necessary than in crops where there is no source of deep genetic diversity. The reservoirs of deep genetic diversity make breeding tomatoes for organic farming practicable. You don’t even need to use Solanum habrochaites, the South American red tomatoes have more genetic diversity than the domestics- it’s just spread across many accessions. I am having great success incorporating some of those genetics while I wait for my hab crosses to segregate back to palatability.
That’s crazy!!! and also dangerous to freedom & respecting seed saver’s rights.
Since Brassica can easily cross, that means our Brassica veggies aren’t safe too. Broccoli, Chinese Napa Cabbage, Turnips, Rutabagas, Kales, Mustards, Brussels Sprouts & even Radishes (If intergeneric hybrids happen) too!
I don’t know, I’ve never met those folks. I’m not passionate about GMO’s, however I do want to encourage Open Sourcing GMO. Are there any Open Source GMO’s available or is literally every single one ever created patented & closed soruce? Is no one seriously making Open Source GMO’s?
That’s crazy but yea very true technically! I see the danger of not owning your seeds.
Speaking of which, why can’t we just recreate the purple tomato effect using different genes & open source it for everyone?
& why stop at Purple color, why can’t we make Blue Tomatoes also! It wouldn’t be too hard to graft Tomatoes onto Blue fruited Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum flaccidum) in hopes that the blue fruit color can get transfered via a Combination of HGT & Crossing?
Both are Solanum & in the same subgenus, more closely related than Lycianthes acapulcensis (But maybe it can still work? Both still same Subfamily).
Has it also been combined with Reciprocal Grafting to lessen hybridiation barriers? Or Mentor Grafting?
Very True! Such incredible almost untapped genetic diversity.
Lets not forget the Tree Tomatoes Solanum juglandifolium, still part of the same Lycopersicon section (Maybe as a seperate subsection?).
Still that being said, the GMO Purple Tomatoes offers literally only 1 trait, Purple Flesh color. Flavor is boring, even many grocery store tomatoes taste significantly better.
I can live without the “Purple Flesh Color” trait, it’s not a deal breaker for me. But I do like the diverse colors. Only Colors missing in Tomatoes are Blue color.
Back to Palatability??? I thought Solanum habrochaites was already edible. I though it was Solanum pennellii that had the questionable edibility with even ripe berries tasting nasty according to Lofthosue.
The tomato I’m referring to is endless Summer a very slow ripening tomato if you have it with other tomatoes the gas that produces will ripen they will ripen it but I had when I grow them I had them semi right all the way till the next summer
Yikes… , even for the risk of 1% GMO Genes contamination. Does this mean you will have to DNA test each seed you plant? Yea the genes will inevitably spread but doesn’t that also make it harder to enforce the patent? Will Feral Tomatoes that escape into the wild have Purple GMO Tomato Genetics too? What then? 
Very True! Such incredible almost untapped genetic diversity.