I have a friend who swears by Big Beef and Better Boy.

Dave Freed Tomato Guy

Many universities have agriculture programs, those universities conduct research and publish the results. Are you able to use google or a similar search engine? If so, you can access university research results.

Don't even need Google. Just use the search engine here on this forum for starters. Most all questions have been discussed many times before.

Best production discussions

If you take a survey , Big Beef will come on top with no close second.

IMP
crowing conditions (Climate, temperatures, season length, care) all
are are just as important factors as the genetic. Some years are better
than other. For example, 2016 is my worst season in the past 4 years. I
have yet to pick a ripe Big Beef and there are not that many tomatoes on
it either.

But generally speaking I can say Big Beef, Brandy Boy, Big Boy are among the top producers. sey

Thank you, are big boy big beef brandy boy heirlooms, if not? Are there any stabilised version's?.

Yes, they are all hybrid. there are no known stabilized versions of them. BUT quite a few people have been growing Brandy boy from F2 on up to F10 with no know difference from F1.

Sey

I have to correct to what I said above;

There is an OP version of Big Beef. I planted one ( store bough plant) in 2015 and it turned out as mule.

Awesome so the F10 tomato's are stabilised?.

That is what I have heard. There are 2 Gardenweb members here ( John .., goodgroundnut ? ) who have done that. They have written that all F generations (F2 to F10) have bee true and they have not seen any deviation from F1 plant. So technically this qualifies it as OP. And what is more , they have not done any segregation. This means all plants grow from F2,3,4, .. have been true.

Sey

Big beef produces a lot. I have a "champion ||" tomato plant. It produces probably 13 Roma sized tomatoes.

Keep in mind, that growing out a random seed from a hybrid tomato will not automatically ensure the anecdotal results of other gardeners. I'm not saying it won't, but if you take on the endeavor, maintain proper expectations.

In this case, proper expectations mean that you may, or may not get a reasonably acceptable offspring of the parents. Does this mean that it's not worth the effort? Nope. Simply means that you just never know... might be great, might be just a tomato lol.

This is a tricky point. Let me give you a scenario.

Suppose that I have made a hybrid in my backyard lab and subsequently planted out and kept segregating it for a number of years. Say after 5 year I have stabilized a variety that is better than 95% true.

Now I give it a name " Mymater Hybrid". take/print pictures and advertise the seed. as " Hybrid Mymater". I am not lying. I did hybridizing , it is hybrid. But I am not going to say it is F1 of F anything, just "hybrid" period. Besides, nobody can come up with a proof that what I am selling is actually a stabilized hybrid.

Seed companies can do this too. !!!

Now a smart gardener buys my seeds and save seeds from its fruit and plants then. Geez, no difference. haha

Sey

Sey, In the hypothetical you describe, what do you mean by the term... "stabilized hybrid"? Do you mean that you've taken your own hybrid and stabilized it into an OP? If so, why would a seed company want to do this? I mean, where is their incentive?

The benefit of selling a hybrid is proprietary product. Sure, a backyard gardener has the incentive, and growing out saved seeds from hybrids has the potential for a nice result, but it's certainly not guaranteed. If the genetic lines are similar, then sure, the odds of getting close to the parent hybrid rise, but even so, you'll lose a bit of 'hybrid vigor'.

This year I got a volunteer from one of the hybrids from last year's crop. It is an interesting tomato. I'm sure it is a throwback. The fruit is small and flatish - about 1 1/2" across, and 3/4" high. It's like a mini-mater. It has a nice taste, is meaty, ripens quickly, but is nearly useless lol. It's larger than a cherry, and does have a core, so it can't be eaten in one bite. And without just tossing it into a foodmill, it's too small to hand process. In fact, because it has just a small core, it might be perfect for a foodmill. But again, and now this is a volunteer that is sprawling so it surely is not at its best, the yield isn't rocking anyone's world lol.

So... sure... growing out a hybrid is a fine endeavor, but unless you want to stabilize it into an OP for your own personal use, there's no incentive for seed companies. In fact, if they got caught selling an f version of a hybrid, beyond the hybridized generation, and labeling it as the f1 hybrid in question, they could get in a bit of legal trouble.

Then again, I may have misunderstood the hypothetical lol.

rgreen, under the scenario that I mentioned , I think the seed company can have a big incentive, that is the ease of seed production with no need to hand pollinate, tag one flower at a time and save seeds.

Lets say that the final stabilized fruit is not quite the same as F1 fruits ( that we have no idea how/what it was ) but it is still appealing and has a potential to sell. You and I as the seeds buyers have no idea what the F1 fruits were like but we like what we get.

Sey

This post is helpful

Tomato production has two factors, unfortunately. One is basic production potential of that variety. Meaning production in great conditions, little disease and pests, good fertilizing and watering. Usually can be achieved only in a greenhouse, tunnel environment or if you leave somewhere with fantastic weather.

And then there is production in 'your' conditions. For example you have problems with early blight, a little bit of resistance on a mediocre potential plant can push that as your number one producer. I had once a paste kinda tomato (but with great texture), incredible production in one location consistently, and consistently poor (like one of the worst) in another location with colder nights and much more disease pressure.

If you see many people praising some tomato as great producer, means that the potential is high (KBX for example), but is not absolutely necessary it will be good for you also if you have had problems before. Brandywine seems from reports to actually have a high potential, but few people can actually reach it.

Big Beef is one with high potential, and there are many modern hybrids which are still quite a lot more productive also (if they can match the taste or not I do not know). It just happens it became a gardener favourite (in the US at first and due to internet everywhere also) and therefore easily available on seed sites and one of the more talked about hybrids along with sungold.

A agree with what you said , fungus.

You can and may do everything right ( fertilizing, watering ..) but you cannot control the climate in your garden. That is my challenge. And no wonder I do not get near record crop from any variety no matter what.I have the healthiest plant but it take a long time to start setting and ripening and soon after that starts getting cold to the point that tomatoes won't like that kind of weather.

Sey

Wait, is the contention that seed companies are lying about Big Beef and that it's really an OP that they are falsely selling as F1?

Big Beef is a pretty generic-tasting and -looking tomato. Seems like it would be possible to get subsequent generations that people not growing in very challenging conditions and not growing on a commercial scale could not tell were different from the F1. But it would probably be hard to verify qualities like disease resistance and heat tolerance unless growing in circumstances much more controlled than home gardens that deliberately tested for these qualities.

Which, of course, could be a good argument for home growers saving seed. But it doesn't mean the seed companies are lying about their seed. I would point out that most states have pretty strict laws regarding the labeling of seed as "hybrid", and federal law is pretty clear on it, too. I guess it's a question of how likely it is that seed companies would risk running afoul of those. I could see disreputable small seed sellers maybe risking it, but the kinds of companies that produce popular hybrids that get used large-scale commercially like Big Beef? Seems like that would be the sort of thing that would be hard to hide, and once it got out, it would absolutely destroy a big seed company's reputation.

I think I read somewhere that the breeder of some F1 grape tomato said the F2 will be 99% identical. Which to me basically means it's not F1, but like F8. Or the two parents are so identical it would be no point in making an F1 except to call it F1.

Well, sure. That's just capitalism. That's a move that drug companies pull all the time--reformulate a drug in some minor way that doesn't make it meaningfully better just to call it a new drug and get a patent on it, etc. But saying that people are producing hybrids that aren't adding to the tomatoscape in any significant way is a very different accusation than saying that companies are lying outright and passing off OP seed as hybrid.

I want to buy GMO tomato seeds spliced kudzu genes.