All the plants are looking great, really interesting stuff going on in here!
Is there going to be a way to tell if your regular sized tomatoes have been pollinated by themselves or by the dwarfs specifically or are you just increasing your odds of finding more dwarves in your next generation?
Thanks, yeah I’ve grown quite passionate about tomatoes and tomato breeding as well. These are actually the F2 generation of my hybrid. I crossed a full sized indeterminate French heirloom tomato called jaune flamme to my favorite micro dwarf tomato fat frog.
I took seeds from the micro dwarf when I made the hybrid. The F1 generation yielded massive, vigorous tomatoes, so I knew the pollen took because dwarf is a recessive trait. Tomatoes primarily self in nature and only occasionally hybridize. It is very fun to line breed them because you only have to select plants and save seeds from their fruit. If you did not intentionally cross them, it is most likely that they will self. The pistil is inside the same flower that has the stamen that make the pollen.
So now that they are F2, I only have to identify the dwarf and micro dwarf tomatoes while they are young, and the trait will be locked in for all future generations. So right now, I’m only growing dwarfs and micro dwarfs to make a selection to continue stabilization. Around F7, my variety will be fairly stable and completed.
Wow, amazing work! So your dwarf tomatoes outdoors will still only grow a foot or so tall (hard to judge by the pics) and are the dwarf tomatoes indeterminate as well or are they now a semi-determinate or full on determinate? I have grown the tomato variety Amber (not my favorite) over a few years and it usually stays pretty small too, although I don’t think it would be considered a dwarf variety (just looked it up and one seed company calls it “dwarf enough for container culture”).
I always grow 12-15 tomatoes every summer so let me know if you want me to grow out any of your generations to see how they do outdoors. I typically look for PM resistant varieties as our summers are fairly cool with a lot of overnight fog with a lot of moisture and sometimes fog all day. I have raised beds that are 8x4 feet and a few 6x4’s as well, seems like you only need to space these things a couple feet apart.
I bred a regular indeterminate to a micro dwarf. I know that there are 2 recessive dwarfing traits that must occur to produce a micro. I think the best source of information is this paper Genetic and physiological characterization of tomato cv. Micro-Tom - PubMed
This cultivar, however, is poorly characterized. It is shown here that Micro-Tom has mutations in the SELF-PRUNING (SP) and DWARF (D) genes. In addition to this, it is also shown that Micro-Tom harbours at least two independently segregating resistance loci to the plant pathogen Cladosporium fulvum. The presence of the self-pruning mutation in Micro-Tom, that generates a determinate phenotype, was confirmed by crossing and sequence analysis. It was also found that Micro-Tom has a mutation in the DWARF gene (d) that leads to mis-splicing and production of at least two shorter mRNAs. The d mutation is predicted to generate truncated DWARF protein. The d sequence defect co-segregates with dark-green and rugose leaves, characteristics of brassinosteroid biosynthesis mutants. Micro-Tom also carries at least another mutation producing internode length reduction that affects plant height but not active gibberellin (GA) levels, which were similar in dwarf and tall Micro-TomxSeverianin segregants.
However a later 2015 paper I found characterizes it a semi-determinate.
http://www.lcb.esalq.usp.br/publications/articles/2015/2015jpfv177n1p11-19.pdf
Here, we used near-isogenic lines (NILs) in the cultivar Micro-Tom (MT) with different growth habit to characterize semi-determinate growth and to determine its impact on developmental and productivity traits. We show that semi-determinate genotypes are equivalent to determinate ones with extended vegetative growth, which in turn impacts shoot height, number of leaves and either stem diameter or internode length. Semi-determinate plants also tend to increase the highly relevant agro- nomic parameter Brix × ripe yield (BRY). Water-use efficiency (WUE), evaluated either directly as dry mass produced per amount of water transpired or indirectly through C isotope discrimination, was higher in semi-determinate genotypes.
The dwarf gene is separate from the self pruning gene, so you can have dwarf indeterminate plants. These are usually 3-5ft in my experience, although I grew dwarf sweet sue and it was about 6 feet.
I know much less about semi-determinate plants, but I expect that I have a mix of those with dwarf indeterminate and micros as well. This is because I crossed a regular indeterminate to a micro which must have had both recessives.
The small plants you can see above when I did selection were about 50% of the population, which is correct for 2 recessive traits.
I should mention also that the micros are usually less than 1ft.
But dwarf indeterminate are real workhorses for their size. Micros usually can only produce cherries from currant size up to large cherry. Dwarf indeterminate can grow full size beefsteaks, but the jaune flamme has a nice saladette size that I find to be very versatile for cooking. They’re smaller than a tennis ball but a little larger than a golf ball.
You can dry them, use them for sauce, salsa, eat them as a snack or slice them on crackers. It’s a good multipurpose size that doesn’t commit you to a 1lb tomato but can still be used for similar things. The jaune flamme has a solid orange flesh and intense tomato flavor and the fat frog has more sweetness with a green gel interior and yellow/orange flesh. The F1 had a good balance between the two and were really tasty.
The full size plants are unmanageable indoors. I was pruning 32 gallon trash cans of growth each week. Dwarf indeterminate are much easier to trellis, and I would even prefer to grow them outdoors. Two bamboo stakes will usually do a fine job.
Come springtime, I’ll send you some with where I’m at. I’m trying to find varieties that I like and breed dwarfs with them.
My favorite tomato is probably aunt Ruby’s German green, and I am planning to breed that into a dwarf version and spend quite a bit of time backcrossing and reselecting the dwarf trait.
I have a nice dwarf indeterminate to start with that is half Cherokee green called “dwarf jackass”. 
Cherokee green is still pretty different from aunt Ruby, but maybe the closest I’ve found.
Anyway, keep in touch and when you’re getting ready to sprout for the spring garden, I’ll send you some of where I’m at. I also have an 8x4 raised bed. Dwarf tomatoes are really nice grow in them. I’ll probably setup a second 8x4 for next year.
Awesome, those will be fun to try out! We have been growing Pink Boar, Sakura (large cherry/small saladette), Granadero (Roma type), Mountain Merit (det.), and Green Zebra (although they take awhile to reach maturity) for the past few years. Always down to try something new.
Over the summer I did aunt Ruby, sungold, Cherokee green, hillbilly and oaxacan jewel. Both the aunt ruby and the sungold were very productive for me, and both produced tomatoes early season.
I also grew dwarf blazing beauty, and I will definitely grow that one next year as well. It’s my favorite so far from Craig LeHoullier’s dwarf tomato project. I can send you some of those too. I think they’re dwarf champion x elbe. Really nicely flavored orange beefsteak that started producing mature tomatoes probably a week or two before aunt Ruby even.
Nice, sugnolds are crazy growers and yielders and that dwarf blazing beauty looks like a beautiful tomato. Might have devote a whole raised bed to dwarf tomatoes…
This looks about right for the current stage. Micros are going to be slightly different, because I am using my own mix which has more Zn, B, Mo and Cu and slightly less Mn and Fe.
Here’s what I still have left after handing over 9 females to @8k_feet. The males are the tall ones on the outsides. I’m going to try and get a little pollen off them and me and him will have a pretty good set of girls to make selections from.
Feeling pretty good about the # of girls we have to pick from. Early selection is really paying dividends now.
I’ve been following along and lurking for a while. The work you’re doing with tomatoes is really cool. I keep a few tomato plants outdoot in the summer here in OK. If you’d like to see how they do in this outdoor environment, I will be happy to grow out some testers.
Totally! I’ll make a post on here in maybe 4-5 months and get some seeds out to people who are interested. I’m not yet sure if I’ll have time to get the aunt ruby dwarf started, but I might if I can get off my ass and setup my 4x4 tent to make the first cross. Maybe I’ll do that over thanksgiving break.
A/B is helicoid cyme, B scorpiod cyme (I think), D is Raceme
Another interesting difference is in the inflorescence structures. I really like the Raceme structure, which came from the Jaune Flamme. It appears to be recessive, because I see much more of the Cyme structure, which the Fat Frog had.
I already see so many differences, so I’ll have to see what I want to select for first. Some things might be possible to select later assuming I get a heterozygous trait. But the recessives will be fixed (either dwarf or self pruning will be guaranteed since I selected short plants already).
So you remove juvenile stamens from the target plant and fertilize with the desired pollen?
I’m curious about this too.
I’m fascinated with tomatoes, have been for some time. I usually grow 5-6 varieties a year and have a lot of volunteers in the beds now thanks to the furry things. I’ve noticed the frames staying similar but the fruit being significantly different. I assume this is parental traits exerting themselves and/or interbreeding.
I have a raised bed with a few varieties. Tons of volunteers pop up. If they come up in an area with enough space from adjacent plants, I let them grow. I’ve had some pop up over the years that look totally different than what I’d previously planted.
In my 2022 garden, one of the volunteers that popped up late made miniature San Marzanos. They were the same shape/texture/flavor as San Marzano, but they were only about 2cm long and 1cm diameter. They were in clusters like grapes. The indeterminate was fast growing in a straight vine. It grew up to a low hanging tree branch and continued to climb up the branch until the first frost.
Was trying to see if I had a decent pic, but no. I have a million pics of the weed garden, and like 2 pics of the other beds 
I’ll have to take more pics next year
Yeah it’s a bit more tricky than pollinating cannabis. You have to select a flower that is at the right stage of maturity. You want one that has opened already, but is not fully open and able to produce pollen. Usually the window is only a few days, but flowers all develop at different times, so you can usually find at least one.
Then you get some tweezers and remove the anther cone from around the pistil. That’s slightly delicate, because it’s easy to damage the pistil. Once you have exposed the pistil, it’s ready for cross pollination.
You can go find open flowers on your pollen donor plant, and use an electric toothbrush to shake out some pollen. It’s a tiny amount compared to cannabis (also because cross pollination is not it’s primary mode of reproduction). I like to use something flat and black in color so you can see it easily. Then just take it over to your exposed pistil and touch the pistil in it and/or brush it on with a small art brush.
Line breeding is much more relaxed than cross breeding, so you can just grow and select at will, without doing anything special.
A few years ago, I crossed Jungle spice (Congolese x 88g13) to cannabiogen Durban. @8k_feet just finished growing it and found a big range of stuff — from freaky sativas to hybrid stature plants. He gave me some buds from one that was somewhere in between.
What does my nose smell?? DIESEL. And smoking in my dry herb vaporizer is like wrapping my lips on a tailpipe.
I didn’t say anything to my wife, but she smelled it and was like “why does this smell like diesel?”. I’ve never seen her turn down weed, so I think she is legitimately concerned that @8k_feet spilled gas on it or something.
Anyway, that’s a weird combination of strong, distinct terpenes. But there’s a start of reinvention.
The variability in this f2 generation is truly mind blowing.
Some of the plants are very open canopied with big thick stems. This is the jaune flamme structure, except in compact form. There are 3 of this type. They have less apical dominance compared to the fat frog structures. Two of the JF-structured plants have cyme inflorescence, while the other has raceme. I’m sure there will be additional differences in the fruits, once it develops.
The FF-structured plants have the larger rugose leaves. They’re bushier and grow more like a tree structure. I think all of these have cyme inflorescences, but there might be a raceme. I need to look more closely next time.
The remaining plant is… something else. It almost seems like a determinant plant. The growth nodes bifurcate like crazy with smaller stems. It’s pictured in the last photo. I’m really curious to see how it fruits. It’s very bush like and potentially a very convenient structure.
You can see from the side view they’re all still pretty short. Should have a lot of fruit coming in soon.
Next reservoir fill, I’ll bump the ec to 2.4-2.5
