Anyone has experience on how clear habrochaites type traits in s.lycopersicum x s.habrochaites F2s early growth translate in later traits, more importantly fruits, and is there hope for better in F3s or is it a dead end? Seems like most of the strongest growers in my trial look quite identical to F1s and it makes me wonder if there are any prospects in them? I feel like I have to leave some or there wouldn’t be much left. I already culled the most miserable looking plants, both domestic and habrochaites types, but there are still some best growing habrochaites types alongside fairly average domestic types. I can leave them tighter than usual, but if there isn’t more reason than to possible use as a pollinator then I could cull at least some of the ones that are next to ok looking domestic types. Any input?
Habrochaites type with some ok looking more domestic types.
My F2 S. lycopersicum x s. habrochaites have been extremely similar to the F1 and always strongly expressing Solanum habrochaites traits. I also suspect that because Solanum habrochaites is such a prolific pollen producer and the hybrids are not, that a significant portion might have actually been 3/4 Solanum habrochaites but I have no way to verify this. I had to make a deliberate cross back to domestic to get significant recovery of domestic traits.
I have noticed same with pimpinellifolium and cheesmaniae crosses too. F2s seem to highly resemble F1s. This year I had some dwarf types in them so maybe not all of them are just mainly wild types.
I had two habrochaites growing last year so it’s possible that they are also 3/4 crosses. I did use flowers to make crosses and they didn’t grow very well (or were overpowered by F1s) before succumbeing to LB so maybe not too many changes to work as a pollen doner. I did have fairly poor germination so maybe it’s that many of the seeds weren’t pollinated and so backcrosses were more dominant. At least I have some domestic types. Plan is to use them along with habrochaites types to cross with 25% pimp/25% cheesmaniea/50% lycopersicum population. Hopefully that will yield more useful domestic traits.
