My friend Blane, in Alabama, has a tomato season that starts a few months ahead of us - so he gets a first look at the various breeding lines he's helping to evaluate. Here are a couple of photos of fruit in the F4 generation of Siberian Tiger (from our cross OSU Blue x Beauty King). Not only is Blane a skilled grower and keen observer - he's lucky, often finding just the segregating variant we are looking for. Thanks Blane! Photos by Blane Horton.
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| The classic Siberian Tiger stripes in unripe fruit |
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| Segregation in the F4 - the one on the left is what we are after |
August 2013 update - unfortunately neither Blane nor I could stabilize the striking F4 phenotype (on the left). I had shared seed of the original "tiger striped" F2 with a handful of people and one or more of the early generation lines was commercialized under the name Siberian Tiger. These show variable phenotypes, none of which appear to capture my original product concept - so it goes. Some good news however ...
This is a F6 segregate from my original breeding cross, found this summer in our Pennsylvania nursery. To avoid any confusion the working name for this line is Bengal Tiger, more on stability next year.
