I have been working with an unstabilized long keeping, late blight and cold weather resistant yellow cherry tomato line since 2011. The parent lines included both *pimpinellifolium (LA1589 and PI 79532), habrochaites (*LA1777) and (i’m almost sure) *pennellii (*LA-716)… chilense and peruvianum might have contributed to the gene pool but I’m not sure.
They were always the last plants with edible fruits (even if not the most palatable) and showed tremendous late blight resistance. They were also undisputedly the first volunteer tomato plants of the year, with “gargantuous” amounts of feral plants appearing around their mother’s growing ground… long before last frost of the year and long before any other seedlings even dared.
I’m calling “Nora”, the line resulting from a chance cross between that yellow cherry and an unknown red in 2018. I had sown many thousands of cherry tomatos (close to 40 varieties that had been grown in close proximity during 2011-2017) in a big bed in early February. Kept the most vigorous 40 plants (privileging natural crosses due to hybrid vigor) in the beginning of April.
I was (always am) selecting for drought tolerance and noticed that this plant was behaving really well, producing fruits even in extreme high temps. Autumn came, and after a couple of frosty nights and continuous damp weather, I assumed every plant would be dead and every fruit would be something in between bland-mushy-rotten. When I got back to using the bed (late October!!!) I realized that, not only the plant didn’t die, but it kept setting and ripening fruit during that time… and they had remained extremely tasty, keeping really well on the countertop after that. Those seeds segregated 1/4 yellow plants.
So, “Nora” is a red fruited strongly indetermined, drought tolerant, very late blight tolerant, very cold tolerant (frost resistant to an extent) and the fruit has amazing keeping quality…being the only line in my garden, that keeps setting really palatable fruit in October… I dare say, more flavorful than many other cherry varieties during the Summer.
They keep so well that, instead of rotting, they tend to dehydrate in the plant if left untouched.
I really like this one, and would like to send seed to gardeners who are already sowing/transplanting earlier than common sense would suggest… and/or are interested in assessing them for drought and/or late blight, frost tolerance, keeping ability.
(I also have an F2 of (“Nora” x ”Sungold Select”) X (“Red Centiflor” x “Sungold”)