Viability of Tomato Seeds

[rary]

I have three mountain magic tomato plants outdoors one is showing the effects of the cold purple leaves etc. it has five tomatoes on it if I cut it back and move it into the greenhouse and I get the tomatoes to ripen will they be any good for seed. I know mountain magic is an F1 it is more about the viability of the seed I wish to know

[rary]

Could a Mod. Be kind enough to change the title of this thread to Viability of Tomato Seeds

Done

[Penellype]

In my experience tomato seeds are virtually indestructible. They survive the hotbin, they self seed in the veg garden and I understand that they can also survive being eaten by people. I'm sure if you get some ripe tomatoes they will produce viable seeds, although what the resulting plants will be like is anyone's guess.

[Baldy]

Think cadalot has or is going g to do this with MM seeds
.
I could be mistaken (though that's vanishingly unlikely )

I reused last year's compost more than usual, and have been pulling up unwanted Tom seedlings left right and centre... so agree with Penelope...

[bramble]

Rary, I would think you will get seeds, no problem. As they are F1 I think you are taking your chances.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Go for it.

[rary]

Thanks Bren, and Penellype, and could you tell me do the second generation seeds stay true

[veggiechicken]

Saved F1 seeds are unlikely to produce the same tomato when grown. Subsequent generations of seeds will produce different tomatoes again............and so on.
You may be lucky - or you may not and you won't know until the first tomato is produced whether it was a waste of effort.
If you're hoping that these offspring will be blight resistant - don't rely on it.

[rary]

VC its as bramble says nothing ventured nothing gained, and I never have any problems with blight, if I keep the next generation from cross pollination would their seeds still be different or would they be true to the parent?

[Baldy]

Mendel eh!
From what I remember of O level biology they aren't going to be consistent - it will take generations before you can be confident of the subsequent characteristics of offspring
https://www.thompson-morgan.com/f2-a...ated-varieties
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F1_hybrid

You might get a lot of thc specific knowledge - do let me know how the research goes

[Penellype]

Thanks Bren, and Penellype, and could you tell me do the second generation seeds stay true

F1s are produced by breeding from specific strains which are each homozygous (have 2 genes) for various desirable features (for example colour, sweetness, blight resistance, cherry sized fruit etc). The F1 progeny will only have one gene for each desirable feature and one gene that isn't, and the idea is that the F1 expresses as many as possible of the desirable traits. However, once you start breeding the F1s together everything gets muddled up. Muddling up is much easier than unmuddling to get a specific result - think of shuffling a pack of cards. Whatever you do in terms of shuffling the pack, unless you specifically pick out individual cards in the correct order you are vanishingly unlikely to get the pack back into the original order.

So the answer to the question is no, the 2nd generation will not breed true. Varieties which breed true are ones which are homozygous for all of the important traits and therefore there is very little variation available for the offspring's genes.

[MarkPelican]

I grew some Mountain Magic seedlings from seeds I had saved last year and got two different varieties of tomato, one with potato leaves and one with normal leaves. I went on holiday and the plants pegged it before I was able to take them to the allotment and plant them.

However, when I was looking at the parentage, I couldn't work out which (or whether either) of the parents were potato leafed. What was clear is that one parent is resistant to blight and the other is a sweet tasting cherry so I guess I would have got one or the other.

However, my plan is to try again next year (and not go on holiday).

My experience of growing hybrids is from another variety (not an F1 I admit).

I got a very nice yellow cherry tomato (Oleron Yellow) which when I tried to buy the second year, was not available. So I sowed seeds I had saved. I got three different tomatoes, one red and two yellow (neither exactly the same as the original), one ripens earlier than the other.

I selected from the two yellow strains and have been growing them for five years, taking seed from the two different varieties each year and they've kept the same characteristics with one slightly darker than the other and ripening about 10 days apart.