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How would one cross tomatoes for cold hardiness?

16 years ago

I have zero experience in hybridizing but it sounded like a fun project, I want to cross a tiny tim tomato with a burnley bounty tomato to make a cherry tomato that grows well in the winter time, inside under lights or in a sunny inside position. From what I understand the burnley bounty tomato is about best late tomato available in australia and it produces well into late winter here. How would I go about transferring the cold hardiness of this tomato into the tiny tim plant and how many generations might this take? Is this possible? Might I better spend my time by just growing the tiny tim plant under these colder indoor conditions and just selecting the seeds from the strongest plants generation after generation?

Comments (2)

greenthumbgardener
16 years ago
I like to dabble in the art of hybridizing, but I would leave tomato hybridizing to the experts that have a lot of acreage to devote to the subject. You would have to grow hundreds of plants and test them for height, hardiness, disease, etc. If you are really interested in hybridizing, why not start out with a smaller project and smaller plants to begin with? I hybridize African violets for a hobby, and I have to grow at least a hundred plants to blooming size to get something that even comes close to what I want. I may only get one good plant out of a hundred. Can you imagine doing that with plants as large as tomato plants?

Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide on.
Bill
farmfreedom
16 years ago
Try the one developed in Greenland for the military base .and those for drought conditions . check www.nativeseedsearch.org for wild types .

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