There is no official list.

If there were, you can imagine how freakin' long it would be with thousands of tomato varieties in circulation!

And yes, simply referring to a tomato in a typed message by two or three initials leaves most readers completely clueless as to what to the writer is referring.

The easiest and most courteous way for the writer to fix the issue would be to write the full name of the variety out in the first mention, followed by the initials in parentheses for the moniker to be used through the rest of the message. Example: "Aunt Ruby's German Green (ARGG) is a good, heirloom, green when ripe (GWR) tomato."

This is the way most professional writers would do it and the way you find it done in other fields of study. Then the reader would know what ARGG when she or he encountered it throughout the rest of the discussion.

And if some us forget from time to time to define our abbreviations, whether for tomato varieties or otherwise, just ask the poster politely what variety it refers to or what any other abbreviation refers to.

And pretty soon you too might well be using those abbreviations yourself.( smile)

Carolyn

I've seen a few initials used in listing tomatoes but they refer to disease tolerance, such as VFN (V is for Verticulum and F is for Fusilliam - spelling may be wrong - and I would have to look up the N).

Mike

Mike, I think we're talking about abbreviations such as:

KB, Kellogg's Breakfast
KBX, KB PL ( potato leaf as opposed to RL ( regular leaf)
NAR, Neves Azorean Red
LPB, Large Pink Bulgarian
CP, Cherokee Purple
CG, Cherokee Green
CC, could be Cherokee Chocolate or Champagne Cherry but in the context of the post it's usually clear which one.

....and on and on. LOL

And tomato problems such as

BER, Blossom End Rot
EB, early blight (caused by A. solani)
LB, Late Blight ( caused by P. infestans)

......and many more

And yes, tomato disease tolerances for hybrids and some OP's which are almost always defined at the better sites,such as:

V, Verticillium
F, Fusarium and three races so F, FF , FFF referring to those 3 different ones which show no cross tolerance
N, Root Knot Nematodes
T, Tobacco Mosaic Virus

and many more.

it's the variety abbreviations that many of us use without even thinking about it that certainly CAN be confusing to others new to the area and some NOT new as well, so as I said above, if the abbreviation isn't known to someone and not defined , just ask.

Carolyn, as in CJM, ( smile)

Thx Carolyn, that's pretty much what I was looking for.

And thx to hoosiercherokee for the following suggestion:

>simply referring to a tomato in a typed message by two or three initials leaves most readers completely clueless as to what to the writer is referring. The easiest and most courteous way for the writer to fix the issue would be to write the full name of the variety out in the first mention, followed by the initials in parentheses for the moniker to be used through the rest of the message.Hey, with help like this, some of us newbies to the group may actually be able to contribute something useful to others ;-)

Again - Thx!

Will and the Fur Crew