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Tomato Outcrossing Update from Keith Mueller, a genuine expert

Keith Dowling Mueller ("Mule" to his pals) is a postdoc in tomato
horticulture at North Carolina State University.  I first found Keith over
in rec.gardens, but he doesn't visit much lately.  (Probably the group just
got too big for him.)

Here on the SQFT List, we've been discussing just how far apart one ought to
plant different tomato varieties to foil cross pollination, and answers have
ranged from 5-6 feet to more than 200 feet.  I decided to forward this
question to Keith for a definitive answer because I've got some gorgeous
little seedlings of OP heirlooms under lights right now and I don't wanna do
anything stoopid in a couple more weeks when they go outside.

It turns out that tomatoes cross-pollinate less than 10 percent of the time
left to their own devices.  In one high-altitude study done in Colombia, a
potato-leafed variety was planted between 2 rows of a regular-leafed variety
and more than 50,000 offspring plants from the seeds were grown out.
Believe it or not, only 30 of the offspring showed up with the "wrong" leaf
structure (i.e., only 30 had crossed).

I'm pretty relieved to hear this as it appears that saved seed will be true
the vast majority fo the time.

Keith cautions seed savers to avoid hanging onto seed from just one plant of
a particular variety.  He suggests that for gene-pool heterogeneity, savers
should retain seed from a minimum of 6 different plants, and 12 is even better.

All you tomato growers will benefit from visiting his outstanding homepage,
which has links to all sorts of other great tomato resources like the Texas
A&M University disease catalog (with color pix) and lots of info on tomato
work done at NCSU.  There's a spot where you can register your personal
favorite varieties as well.

Check Keith out at

http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/k/kdmuelle/public/hp.html

--Janet
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Janet Wintermute             jwintermute@ids2.idsonline.com
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