How did Dwarf Tomatoes became engineerd?

[offthehook]

Title says it all. (EDIT: I mean the dwarf size of the plants here, not the size of the berries.)

I am interested in the technick behind producing strains like Tiny Tim 'n such.

If I think about it long enough I see several possibilitys of how to get there, but my ways just seem to be to damn complicated to ever get to achieve it small scale.

Hence I would like to know if there is any one out there who knows for sure how it is done?

Once I know this for sure I could think about applying the method towards Cannabis.

Dwarf strains are damn complicated to achieve imo, but are a blessing to small surface and sog growers when bred into perfection.

Note, I am NOT talking about bonzai technicks here right now, adding autoflowering genes or other artificial or chemical ways to keep plants shorter.

Only heirloom bred dwarf forms showing lots of abundence in vigor and health* based on their geneticly engineerd fundamentals is where I am after.

(eg. *lots of yield beeing produced in short amount of time)

 

[Maria_Vanessa]

Title says it all.

I am interested in the technick behind producing strains like Tiny Tim 'n such.

If I think about it long enough I see several possibilitys of how to get there, but my ways just seem to be to damn complicated to ever get to achieve it small scale.

Hence I would like to know if there is any one out there who knows for sure how it is done?

Once I know this for sure I could think about applying the method towards Cannabis.

Dwarf strains are damn complicated to achieve imo, but are a blessing to small surface and sog growers when bred into perfection.

Note, I am NOT talking about bonzai technicks here right now, adding autoflowering genes or other artificial or chemical ways to keep plants shorter.

Only dwarf forms showing lots of abundence in vigor and health* based on their geneticly engineerd fundamentals is where I am after.

(eg. *lots of yield beeing produced in short amount of time)

If you want specific information, you should go and check your local library or university library. You can find some good information online, but sometimes you have to be careful.

Usually, if its a cultivar, it was probably created in a breeding program at a university with good agriculture program like Cornell, Clemson, The University of Georgia, Texas A&M, etc.

Other times, companies like Monsanto will create new cultivars to contract out to farmers to grow.

And sometimes, mother nature like to create natural genetic varieties.

 

[rexamus616]

The plants weren't 'engineered'. They were selectively bred, or the result of evolution.

You get the seeds from the best plant that shows the best characteristics (of your choice) and sow as many as you can. Then pick the best fruit from the best plant and process the seeds ready to sow next season.

Each generation will have some plants which are better, some that aren't, and some strange ones that sometimes come along. By choosing the best, you can improve the strain, and by choosing anomalies, you can create new varieties.

You can also cross pollinate.

 

[DocLeaf]

^^^ what they said

The plants were selected towards the smallest fruits in each season.. until homogeneous for that trait.

At fritillary seed we inbreed many varieties,, several of these varieties are our own hybrids, that we have then selected towards specific traits (purple fruits, scent, taste). The next season we work with seeds from the fruits with the selected traits, and select the fruits/plants which most openly represent our new variety, and inbred the plants.

Over many generations the new variety becomes stable, and only produces the desired plants / fruits/ seeds... it's long haul.

The same is true of cannabis,, when bred by real breeders... like GrowDoc.

Hope this helps

 

[monkeysee]

Very carefully.

 

[offthehook]

Thank you for your responses.

Still there are some more "heirloom based" ways by using certain"reversed progeny technics", but so far no one brought it up so it'd be great to skip this tecknic as it would complicate matters severely.

Please keep em comming, Thank you.

 

[Maria_Vanessa]

Thank you for your responses.

Still there are some more "heirloom based" ways by using certain"reversed progeny tecknics", but so far no one brought it up so it'd be great to skip this tecknic as it would complicate matters severely.

Please keep em comming, Thank you.

Reversed progeny tecknics? Can you explain what that is? I'm very curious.

I always though that heirloom plants were just different varities and cultivars that weren't used in modern, monocultured agrifarming and only in small-scale home garden farms.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

most unique fruit and veggie varieties were at least as much 'found' as they were 'bred'.

 

[headband 707]

Mother nature is very accommodating in helping and selecting the right engineering to do the job and it's humans that need to be selective and pick out the traits that are desirable.
In cannabis you can take a mom and bonsai her ,,lots of fun lol too peace out Headband707

 

[offthehook]

Quote Maria vanessa: Reversed progeny technics? Can you explain what that is? I'm very curious.End quote.

Fuck, I knew I got that one comming LOL

I mean with it, that you store the parental seeds, mark them, try some of them, and out of their offspring you pick the desired ones only to breed them back on their own parents, do some progeny test etc etc.

Even possible to do over, or while skipping some generations.
Main thing is you got to do your administration right that way and keep verry carefully track of "what produced what" and store and mark all genetics for future reference.

Well, complicated shit, like i said lol

Heirloom means, that the plants were bred on a way that successive generations still provide viable seeds that will still represent the parental feno.
As opposed to F1 hybrids, were one or boths these traits will be missing. Hence heirloom is mostly prefered by small scale gardners and farmers wanting to provide their own breeding stock for next years season, whereas commercial farmers economically seem to benefit mostly from f1 hybrids that guarantee pest resistend strains and homogenous quality of their product.(usually these will have to buy their seeds every year from companies that are specialised in producing f1 hybrid stock)
Hope this helps.

@headband. The difficulty growing dwarfstrains is to select for health and vigour.

Normally health and vigour are beeing expressed by size and speed of vegetating and fruiting material.

So on regular breeding ways bigger usually equals better.
But this way it is hard to get a dwarf strain selected only.
A well bred dwarf next to your bonsai regular would fruitwise outgrow your rootbound regular significantly when given plenty of soil any time. ( to be backed up by my 2e hobby "tomatoes" not that I like them so much but it makes for some nice legal experimenting )

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

OK... this question got me interested enough to study up on the origins of tomatoes.

Looks more like they start small, and largeness was selected for in most cultivated varieties.
"dwarf" tomatoes are natural... "Giant" tomatoes are selectively bred.

There are quite a few wild varieties in western South America, which are the origins of most all of the varieties cultivated today.

 

[mean mr.mustard]

Just like corn.

 

[offthehook]

Quote GH:Looks more like they start small, and largeness was selected for in most cultivated varieties.
"dwarf" tomatoes are natural... "Giant" tomatoes are selectively bred. End quote.

Now that's some interesting info ! Thanks for looking it up GH.

From my own experience this would totally fit the glove, never thought of it myself tho.

But but... Are we talking here now about the size of the fruits or of the plant as a whole ?

For my purposes I am not peticularly interested in the size of the fruits.

It's the genetically determined (DWARF) size of the eventual PLANT that counts for me most. That, and the amount of berries per plant under optimal circumstances, NOT the SIZE of the BERRIES.

 

[barnyard]

good question...

good question...

so much pickin' with the cherry types, drives me nuts.

then how 'bout using cherries for canned and having to remove all the skins. its a lot more work

but it depends on what your using them for...

 

[DocLeaf]

Heirloom seed varieties are seeds that have been handed from one generation to the next generation, after being inbred. Ideally these lines should be open bred using as many parents as possible.

The biggest problem when working with these heirloom seed stocks is keeping them in isolation from foreign pollen. For this reason when working as seed guardians we only grow x1 cultigen of each Genus-species each season.

As mentioned storage and labeling is also very important.

Hope this helps

 

[fonzee]

Cherry tomatoes we're made in the faculty of agriculture of the Hebrew university.
Its a tomato plant with that was genetically modified to produce smaller plants and fruits by deducting a certain gene.

As cannabis genes aren't entirely mapped out like tomatoes you are facing some pretty hard work.
And if you manage to map the genes completely you could "easily" increase the immunity to mold or increase its resin production, just as you would decrease its size.

 

[offthehook]

@ barnyard.

I use them to get "genetical and grow technical insight" that I can use when converting this knowledge to cannabis.

(Ofcourse I share them with my family, friends and neibours too when they are done.)

One's got to understand that Dwarfs get a huge advantage when grown in limitid space or surface when compared to regular strains.

The Idea behind a Dwarf is to have a perfectly Healthy and Vigorous plant that is able to produce a large rootsystem and fruitmass even though the plant it self remains small in vegetative feno.
Emphazis is put here on health and vigour since these aspects will decide mostly how successfull the strain will become in compare to other technics ment to keep plants low.

@ fonzee, Wow, did not know that. S' bad though if that's true, got to verify that for myself, Thank you.

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Cherry Tomatoes are not GMO, they were selectively bred, while looking for heat tolerant, slow maturing hybrids for hot dessert climates. The genes for producing small tomatoes have been there since before tomatoes were domesticated.

 

[offthehook]

Why would someone be looking for SLOW MATURING hybrids GH ?

(Other then it beeing the most easy trait to select for.)

Or do you mean that under hot dessert climates it becomes a benefit for the plant to be slow maturing?

Wich then would provide for less labour while still harvesting the same crop but on a less frequent basis.

I think I just answered my own question, had to think projects like in Almeria n'such where there is plenty of space.

Cherry tomatoes (the plants!) grow huge when given the right circumstances. I had them over 3.5 meter tall producing lots of berrys that took ages to ripen, but it's not the thing I'm after GH.

I think you've got to make a distinction between Cherry tomatoe plants and Dwarf tomatoe plants now. The latter staying small no matter what, and beeing ready inside a time frame of 55 days only.

(I also notice how annoying it has become to be misunderstood all the time when I refered to tomatoes meaning the plant, while others thought I ment to refere to the berries.
I know it's my own failure somehow but just did not realise I had to use the word TOMATOE PLANT in order for it to be understood by everyone.)

 

[Grat3fulh3ad]

Prof. Haim Rabinowitch, former rector of the Hebrew University, will talk about the development process of cherry tomatoes, which he developed with Prof. Nachum Kedar. ''We were looking for a way to slow down the quick ripening of regular tomatoes, a phenomenon that is typical for large tomatoes in hot countries. After a great deal of work over many months, in 1973 we succeeded in identifying the appropriate genetic combination to slow down maturation, and developed a way to exploit the genes to enhance the tomatoes,'' explains Prof. Rabinowitch.

perhaps in the hot arid climates the fruit matured too quickly for some purposes. Not really sure of the exact whys.


As far as the 'dwarf varieties' I see what you are talking about, these seem to be lines which have been hybridized between indeterminate and determinate varieties, and selected for the tight internodes associated with determinate varieties with indeterminate growth when inbred. That way you end up with as many fruiting sites as a larger variety in a more compact plant.