Double flower

[jackb]

Thinking that we might leave Santa a home grown tomato on Christmas eve, rather than milk and cookies, we have two plants growing indoors. I wanted to compare an off the self variety with a greenhouse variety anyway, so I am doing that also. The flowers in the photo are on a Burpee Super Beefsteak. The first bud to form was huge! When it opened I found that it has two of everything, petals, stamens, pistils; all on one stem. I don't think I have ever seen this, but it should be interesting to see what forms.

Jack B

 

[ninnymary]

Well Jack, that sounds kind of scary to me. Is it a GMO or hybrid? Sounds like something someone has messed with beside Mother nature. :/

Mary

 

[jackb]

Well Jack, that sounds kind of scary to me. Is it a GMO or hybrid? Sounds like something someone has messed with beside Mother nature. :/

Mary

It is not a hybrid, and as far as I know not a GMO, as the variety has been around awhile. I have had the seeds for several years and have grown them outdoors, but never indoors, or in the greenhouse. The Trust plant is a hybrid, with the seeds costing a dollar each, so I thought a comparison would be interesting. So far the Burpee plant is doing slightly better than the hybrid. So much for hybrid vigor.

 

[catjac1975]

Mary-
Do you equate hybrids with GMOs? Hybrids are merely selecting for the best qualities in a plant. Nothing sinister about that. In most cases hybrids are better. For instance in tomatoes many are disease resistant. Humans have been hybridizing for thousands every time they save seeds from the most successful plant. The flower jackb showed might be a genetic abnormality for that one flower-something that occurs in nature all the time. It looks to me like a strain I grew some time ago just for the fun of it-forgot the name. Chance changes in the plant world happens all the time and is a good thing as plants adjust to climate and the like.

Well Jack, that sounds kind of scary to me. Is it a GMO or hybrid? Sounds like something someone has messed with beside Mother nature. :/

Mary

 

[ninnymary]

Thanks for the info Cat. I guess I do sort of equate hybrids with GMOs but not in as bad of a way. I think of hybrids as tinkering with them in a good way and GMOs in a bad way.

Mary

 

[so lucky]

I thought the definition of a hybrid was the crossing of the genes of two different vegetables, with the resulting vegetable being a mix of the two different parents.

 

[catjac1975]

That is correct. The trouble with a hybrid is if you save seed it will revert to the parent plant , in different genetic combinations. Many times a hybrid is 2 inferior plants that combine to make a plant with excellent qualities. I have seen many members refer to hybrids in a negative manor. Hybridization is what gives us fresh vegetables at the grocery store. As a backyard farmer I would argue that what in the store is not "fresh" to my and many of your standards. But, most people get their produce at the store and plant science gives us improved produce that withstand shipping and holding at the store. And yeas often at diminished flavor. GMO's have shown signs of being carcinogenic in rats. In another thread many members argued against the use of rats to prove toxicity, which I always thought was standard. The use of heirloom varieties has been very popular in the last few years. When Massachusetts had a tomato blight a few years back most people lost all their tomatoes. Farmers and backyard farmers all the same. The only survivors I had were a few hybrids that were disease resistant . And they were also effected but not entirely killed. Vigor and high yields feed the nation and the world. Don't get me wrong I wish for organic farming nationally , but I do wonder if that is too idealistic.

I thought the definition of a hybrid was the crossing of the genes of two different vegetables, with the resulting vegetable being a mix of the two different parents.

 

[897tgigvib]

Yep, hybrids are normally the result of crossing 2 distinct and stabilized varieties that belong to the same species.

Most big company hybrids are the result of crossing 2 inbred lines to get very uniform F1 hybrids
Old fashioned personal hybrid F1's are the result of crossing 2 varieties that are not usually inbred lines.

Most normal hybridizing does not leave sterile F1 plants, and when done in a natural way, seeds from the F1 can be saved and grown as F2 plants, which will all have different combinations of characters of the 2 original varieties crossed, mostly all different in some ways from the F1. Some of the F2's can be even more special than the F1, especially if the original varieties crossed were normal open pollinated varieties.

Most vegetable varieties available have always had some hybridizing in their ancestry. Yes, even heirlooms. Heirloom growers should not be adverse to normal old fashioned crossing of open pollinated varieties.

=====

GMO varieties on the other hand are varieties and hybrids that have ARTIFICIALLY INSERTED genes in their nuclear DNA, the DNA in the chromosomes. These artificially inserted genes come usually from entirely different organisms such as bacteria or fungus. Those gene/snipets are often altered chemically first, then reproduced in a lab. Once the gene fragment is made uniform and is concentrated, it is then inserted into an inbred mother-father self fertilized seed. For a hybrid GMO, they will do the same for the other inbred parent line. Thoise are then grown and increased into large numbers, most of which will be waste, or maybe used to make compost or animal feed, until just the right parent lines are made. The parent lines are then crossed, and the GMO gene fragment remains.

A few of the GMO things done with corn are:

The inserted gene or genes are used to

make the corn tolerant of roundup
and/or
make the corn plant make its own fungicide that stops things like corn smut.

=====

GMO= not natural
Hybrid= usually natural, but can be done unnaturally

An example of unnatural hybridizing is Brandy Boy F1 hybrid tomato. Breeders cross 2 inbred lines. (inbred lines in tomatoes is not by itself unnatural). One of these inbred lines, the one to become the female parent, is a line that is selected from a long older previuous breeding program where breeders developed a variety that makes no anther cone. Having no anther cone makes the skilled work done by people in India a lot easier. In the case of Brandy Boy, something happens in the genetics so that all the seeds that someone might save from the F1 grow out into plants that make horrible rotten tomatoes because something goes wrong with the pollination and seed development inside the F2 tomatoes.

Effectively, Brandy Boy has an EXTINCTION GENE in it, but do not be confused. The extinction gene here is not from artificial gene insertion. It is from first breeding a variety of tomato that makes no anther cone, which I guess was originally a natural mutation.

Saving and breeding such a natural mutation, which would normally soon itself die off, is an unnatural thing. Plus the effect of it that causes some of its descendants to have extinctiuon gene is considered an extra bonus to the big hybridizing companies.

=====

Editting to add:

Yes, nature can and does GMO's. It is true. They are seemingly random events, and are done by certain Viruses and Bacteria. In fact, scientists use these bacteria and viruses to do the gene slicing and splicing. An example of this in nature is found in the genes of Blackbirds. Strangely, a large percentage of their space filling DNA, the parts that do little or anything other than fill space on the strand, is the same as Trout DNA. Bacteria has been transferring DNA across these 2 species for a very long time.

 

[digitS']

We are drifting quite a ways from Jack's original post . . .

Mutations occur naturally as Cat notes and, it should also be noted that crossing (one could even say "hybridizing") also occurs naturally or with only limited human intervention. One or the other, either a mutation or a crossing, is how all new varieties began. That was true until gene insertion and we have reason to question that process.

What we should realize and appreciate is that diversity

is a wonderful thing. The "Green Revolution" strains of cereal grains make wonderful use of those varieties' ability to turn applied fertilizer and their own photosynthesis into grain and not 6 foot high plants that fall over before harvest. Still, applied fertilizer may be in short supply and varieties that can produce food without it have value to subsistence farmers and to everyone else. Mega commitment to an industrial model can lead to problems - in the world of food just as it was in British rail transport from earlier centuries. Obsolescence of one technology required a very, very expensive replacement with a new way of doing things.

Backyard gardeners who are not reliant on seed companies are involved in a wonderful thing - saving seed from plants that do well in their gardens. Maybe, just maybe, the gardener has the skill to do some plant breeding but whether or not that is true a gardener is involved in a small way in the very big process of feeding the world - one tiny seed at a time.

Steve

 

[jackb]

To make things even more interesting, the petals are just falling off the flower and it has set fruit. Most tomatoes start out size of a match head, but this one is a regular Baby Huey! I am definitely going to save seeds from this one.