Heirloom, Open Air Pollinator, Hybrid?

Tomatoes seem to have their reproduction categorized in these three main categories.

I’m interested in these definitions in the context of reseeding tomatoes.

1) Wouldn’t “heirloom” and “open air pollinator” essentially be interchangeable for the most part?

2) If I understand correctly most hybrids cannot or should not be re-seeded. If not; why not? Are they genetically engineered so they won’t reproduce? Will they revert to one of their origin breeds? Or does it depend on whether it is conventional cross-pollination hybrid (that will simply likely revert upon reproduction); or if it is an advanced genetic engineering hybrid, designed to essentially be reproductively sterile?

I assume all heirlooms and all pollinators can be re-seeded and will keep their characteristics after being re-seeded?

Are there any hybrids that can be re-seeded that will keep their hybrid characteristics?

1. For the most part, yes There are as many definitions of "heirloom" as there are people. All "heirlooms" are stable open pollinated cultivars, but many of the newer open pollinated cultivars are patented (PVP). As long as cross pollination is avoided open pollinated plants offspring have the same characteristics. In the newer plants the patents protect the breeder to allow fror the recovery of developmental costs. Like a copy right, you can save seeds for your own use but not sell or trade them.

2. Hybrids are first generation of deliberately cross pollinated plants. The second generation tends to revert to the parent plants. With some modern hybrids, resulting from a cross between two in bred lines, You may not noticed any obvious reversion.

Seeds from any hybrid have to be considered to result in an unknown outcome. People who specifically spend their time developing new cultivars of various plants are producing hybrids and taking the time and effort to specifically develop a stable hybrid where the seeds of multiple generations result in a stable set of characteristics and no or insignificant reversion to a genetic hybrid line parent. Heirloom , I consider, the same as Open Pollinated but is a plant that has been unchanged by hybridization for multiple decades or more. When I first got into home gardening I was always talking about heirlooms and people were always responding like that was stupid because heirlooms never taste as good as newer hybrids or stabilized hybrid OPs. I think that is similar to arguing that you should take a pharma drug derived from a plant and avoid the plant like a plague...it smacks of big industry profiteering! Most heirlooms are yummy! Of course non-stable hybrid Sweet Corns are amazingly sweet and heirloom Sweet Corns taste awesome but are either not as sweet or the sugars turn to carbs faster in the heirlooms, but I highly value seed saving and not having to buy new seeds each year...so I am going to stagger grow (to avoid cross pollination) at least 3 of these this year for my Sweet Corns: Bloody Butcher, Baby Blue Jade, Rainbow Inca, Stowell's Evergreen, Country Gentleman, True Gold or Golden Bantam Improved Sweet Corn. Note how hard these are to find in Lowe's or Home Depot. They tend to have all F1 hybrids. Though a couple days ago I actually found Lowe's had huge packs of Stowell's Evergreen in packaging better for seed storage than typical paper envelopes too.

Regarding your tomatoes, I hope you have a plan to prevent cross pollination since you are trying to determine which ones taste right for you and how well they grow and develop fruit. If you get cross pollination, your results will be contaminated.

It seems Tomatoes and Sweet Corns are the produce with the largest amount of hybrids on the market and with Sweet Corns the unstable F1 hybrids pretty much have taken over on big store shelves, but Tomatoes seem to have plenty of both hybrids and heirloom and OPs.

Thanks.

From what you both say I gather that in regards to tomatoes that most or all hybrids that are commonly publicly available should have fertile seeds.

I was watching a documentary on genetically modified corn that use genesplicing to insert genes from other species of plants to give the corn superior hardiness, insect and disease resistance. The corn had been genetically modified so that supposedly the seeds were not fertile so that the genetically modified properties would hopefully not mix with more natural corn with cross pollination and so that customers would be dependent on industry.

For decades for the most part I didn't plant tomatoes, they volunteered on their own. At the end of the season I often let some tomatoes rot and drop on the ground and I often ran the mower over the plants to mulch the plants. When I did take the effort to remove the plants at the end of the year I merely moved them to the mulch pile where they sat over the winter or few years until they were recycled back into my tomato garden. For several years I haven't had any volunteers, but it may be because I am being more clean about disposing of damaged or rotten tomatoes and the old plant waste, to prevent bacteria and viruses from infecting my tomatoes.

Ironically since I started doing that the correct way, I seem to have more problems. (Though it may be other factors)

I think over the years I may have inadvertently selectively bred my own disease resistant tomatoes, that was adapted to the soil and the weather conditions for my region. Regretfully I had a few years where I was too busy to maintain a tomato garden so that gene pool died out.

In general, I'd say Tomato hybrids are often more stable more quickly than Corns, yes.

Regarding the prolific Sweet Corn unstable hybrids and especially the GMO Sweet Corns, I don't think most are infertile. In fact, there have been law suits where Monsanto sues farmers they can prove have genes in their OP corn because they've been cross pollinated through the air naturally due to Monsanto GMO corn crops close enough to contaminate the farmers' corn fields. Monsanto wins these suits!


But, yes, Monsanto does try to make terminator seeds which will grow but produce infertile seeds on those plants. Nature being corporatized and monopolozed!

This message was edited Mar 12, 2010 6:03 PM