Orange Rapture Tomato F2

[jayb]

I bought a punnet of brightly coloured orange cherry tomatoes, back in May, from Tesco and was pleasantly surprised. Not OMG die for, but ok that's really quite good for a shop bought tommie. Added to the intense orange colour inside and out which really interests me (bearing in mind I don't often rate orange tomatoes highly) I decided to squeeze a few seeds from a fruit into some compost. germination was super and very quick. Makes me wonder at their hang on the vine time, I think it should be long. In the end I settled for 6 seedlings. As it turns out there were two in one of the transplanted modules.

I was expecting fairly uniform plants with the hope of intense orange fruits, but.
I seem to have ended up with two very distinct types. Four fairly regular looking indeterminates and 3 runty small growing types, which are again divided by leaf colour . Regular tomato green and a lighter almost chartreuse green, I've only seen this colour foliage linking back to a dwarf called Tigerette.

At first I thought it were dodgy compost and a lack of care by me but when I came to pot these toms on I noticed one regular and one shortie sharing a module. Bottom far left.



A couple of weeks progress and the first regular type is just starting to flower and for comparison a shortie sibling by the side.



Here are the 3 shorties together



I'm not sure what is at play here.

[Galina]

Lots of f2 variation. Fun to observe.

[jayb]

Yes almost over the top variation for a commercial hybrid, which makes me a little cautious.

[Galina]

In what way? Because it isn't the usual very narrow picture of very similar types, just that some have resistances? I must say the chartreuse in there is a surprise for sure.

[jayb]

I'm thinking along the lines of an intentional stunting or defects to prevent thriving in offspring. Or perhaps I've been watching too much telly!

[Galina]

Ha Ha. Yes of course. Intentional stunting for higher growing/cropping intensity. Can you actually alter the ratio of green to fruit produced with this technique?

[Chris11]

Unlikely intentional. More likely genes which contribute to the F1 characteristics and/or hybrid vigour when they exist as a single copy in the F1, but are detrimental (deleterious) if they exist in one of the F2 variants that happen to have 2 copies of the same gene.

[jayb]

Good points.

[Jang]

Did either the stunted form or the more regular ones lead to anything interesting? Any intense orange? Or did life simply overtake?!

And I’m assuming that the stunted growth is quite different from the micro toms you’re growing now?

[jayb]

Generally, they weren't very tasty, nothing to make them stand out other than the foliage of the smaller and slower-growing ones. I've saved a few seeds which may or may not get sown again.

No these were different in growth to the Micro tomatoes I've been growing under lights recently. These were short growing indeterminate tomatoes with ferny type leaves of a lighter green colour, not quite a chautreau but not far off. Micro Dwarves (Tina, Tom, Gemma and Blue), are again short growing but are determinate and have a rugosa leaf of dark green. But then confusingly I do have some micro type dwarves with different leaf type to the micros above and these would be in some ways more similar in looks to the Rapture segregates.

[Jang]

Dwarf, ferny and nearly chartreuse sounds quite appealing but, without taste, not very useful I guess!

[jayb]

Perhaps for crossing, I'm unsure what is at play though.