Update on my potato leafed tomato volunteer

[hoodat]

I posted earlier about a volunteer that had me wondering if it was a potato or tomato. It is blooming now so I definitely know it's a tomato. It has been growing right through the Winter. No tomatos setting this early, of course, but it really has me interested. It is around three feet tall now. We had several light touches of frost and it sailed right through with no damage. If it produces decent tomatos I will definitely be saving seed on this one. I'll try to get some pics today and post them. The sun isn't up yet.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Thanks for the update. I was thinking about that volunteer yesterday, wondering if you had figured it out.

 

[MontyJ]

YAY! My guess was tomato Now we can guess the variety

 

[897tgigvib]

Do you have any clues what variety Hoodat?

 

[hoodat]

The only potato leaf variety I had last year was Brandywine so it's probably either that or a cross with mortgage lifter, which was beside it. Provided it produces good tomatos I'll share the seed with other gardeners so it doesn't get lost.
It's a very smart tomato. It came up right beside a wooden trellis. I think it's trying to tell me something.

 

[897tgigvib]

When a true breeding potato leaf is crossed with a true breeding regular leaf, the F1 result is a regular leaf plant that carries the potato leaf gene, like this: D/r

Regular leaf is the D, dominant, and potato leaf is the r, recessive.

If the only possibilities are regular leaf mortgage lifter, or potato leaf brandywine, or an F1 cross of the two, (which would be super cool by the way!), then your potato leaf seedling can only be a really nice healthy brandywine.

Some folks get some potato leaf offspring from early girl tomatoes.

 

[journey11]

My Black Krims are potato leafed. I've grown seed from them several times now.

 

[Jared77]

Actually its not that simple.

Some folks get some potato leaf offspring from early girl tomatoes.

Then that means that the Early Girls were heterozygous for the potato leaf trait.

So that means that Hoodat's Mortgage Lifters could be heterozygous for the potato leaf trait also. We don't know that for sure, but its entirely possible.

If both seeds were pure, it would be a Brandywine as Marshall pointed out. However if as I mentioned above that Hoodat's Mortgage lifters were not homozygous you could get a variety of options as to what it could be.

So this gives us a variety of for what it could be. Your assuming that both seeds were pure but when your dealing with recessive traits they can be passed along for generations before the right pairing is made with 2 heterozygous pairings AND both recessive traits are passed along allowing it to be expressed. I personally saw where a recessive trait was passed along for 7 generations before being expressed. It just kept getting passed along. Only through controlled breedings and test breedings can you confirm possible recessive traits.

I honestly think its a cross of Mortgage Lifter and Brandywine. I'm very curious to see how this develops.

 

[hoodat]

I'm trying to get my tongue around those fancy terms but meanwhile here it is.

It's fighting it out with that pea vine that keeps trying to climb on it.

Even for San Diego these are early flowers. If it manages to set fruit I'll be dumbfounded. One of the blossoms is double. I've noticed Brandywine often does that. The doubles seldom set though

 

[897tgigvib]

Jared, if Mortgage Lifter crossed with Brandywine, and presuming the original Mortgage lifter was regular leaf, and his brandywine was potato leaf, the simple gene type for leaf type in tomato works like this:
REGULAR LEAFXpotato leaf

potato leaf is recessive, so that F1 is D/r and the D will be expressed, the D being regular leaf.

Though there are are some other additional leaf traits that affect leaf type in tomatoes, the trait for potato or regular leaf are indeed on the same allele, and thus do get expressed in the perfect mendellian manner. There is almost no complexity with the leaf form in tomatoes as there are for example in fur and coat bandings in cats. It's a single and simple allele point.

I do offer for you to try crossing regular leaf pollen onto a potato leaf stigma. The true F1's will all be like their father and will indeed have regular leaf form. In fact, that is used as a check to ensure the cross was positively done, and accidental self pollination did not also happen. Not going for an argument, that's for sure my friend, just did not want folks to have the wrong idea about this specific point of genetics.

Mendellian transmission genetics in plants are a good part of botany to know. No more complicated than first semester algebra. Well, then some might want to use that chi square formula I always have to look up!