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.