It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … this pretty much describes our 2012 growing/breeding season. The eastern U.S. growing season was generally early, blazing hot and dry. Fruit quality, here I mean splitting, radial and concentric cracking, and catfacing (photos from UCD and UMN websites), was terrible all season long and prevalent in both our MN and PA breeding nurseries. Our home nursery was also hammered this year with Septoria. Although these maladies are primarily weather related, there is also a genetic tolerance component. This was a perfect year to select for stress tolerance generally, and specifically for fruit quality in a tough year. When the going gets tough, the tough get going, and the rest get discarded. We did heavy culling this summer – it may be years before we have a similar selection opportunity. We saved a few lines with outstanding flavor and so-so fruit quality – but most of the lines we advanced rang the bell on both.
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| Radial cracks (UCD) |
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| Concentric cracks (UCD) |
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| Growth cracks (UMN) |
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| Catfacing (UMN) |
The California breeding nursery (Baia Nicchia) was cool and wet early and subject to what looked like TSWV. The selection was not quite as clear cut, but the plants were stressed and we again picked the best of the best. We’ll start adding TSWV resistant germplasm to the breeding program next year.
Last weekend we had a hard frost in MN, bringing a difficult season to a quick end. I finally have all the seed thrashed and compiled with about 350 lines moving forward next year. We’ll be posting photos of some of these in the next few weeks – and there are some beauties.
Dickens had it just about right, in the worst of times (terrible year for tomato production) we had one of our best breeding years ever. Another saving grace was that the stressed tomatoes generally had great flavor.
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