Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

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Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#1

Post: # 24401Unread post Barmaley
Sat Jul 04, 2020 12:28 pm

I was reading about hybridization and de-hybridization and found a statement that F2 can be almost as good as F1. Is it true and if true - why?

Is it a good idea to cross-pollinate F1 with another F1 variety, for instance sungold with Honeycomb or Orange Paruche to get more chance of getting better genes to replace old and bad ones?

Is it possible by looking at what other genes placate themselves in F3, F4 etc to figure out who were the parents to reverse-engineering the F1 method?

I understand that in order to stabilize a hybrid the there are needed a lot of plants. Will it be useful as a community efforts to stabilize a popular one like sungold? Is it legal to stabilize it for community home growth?

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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#2

Post: # 24441Unread post Shule
Sat Jul 04, 2020 8:52 pm

F2 hybrids are most definitely not always inferior to the F1s. People do say this, though. I think they're just trying to protect you from any chance of disappointment, or something. They can be almost as good as the F1. They can even be preferable to the F1. However, you shouldn't have any expectations. You get what you get, without a guarantee, and it's not terribly predictable. You may or may not appreciate what you get.

Each F2 seed will give you at least slightly different results, which you may or may not like better or worse than the F1. You can't expect it to be exactly the same as the F1, even if in a hypothetical specific case it turns out to be just as good. (I edited that, to clarify that I didn't intend to make the statement that they're generally just as good.)

Trying to make a true-breeding version of a commercial hybrid, with all the same traits, can be pretty difficult, and will normally require growing lots of plants to do successfully. It helps if you know the traits of both parents, though.

Breeding entirely new true-breeding varieties out of F1 hybrids is much, much, much easier. All you really have to do in order to stabilize a new tomato (if you're not particular about what traits will be stabilized) is to grow it out enough times (and prevent it from being crossed again); you don't even need lots of plants each generation. Eventually, the genetic diversity should disappear, and you'll have yourself a stable tomato. Of course, it'll likely be much different than the F1. Select for the traits you like.

Stabilizing SunGold F1 is actually something many have already attempted to do (and failed to do, in most people's minds). There are many new true-breeding tomatoes that have come from SunGold F1, but none of them are indistinguishable from it, as far as I've read. Not all tomatoes are as difficult as SunGold F1 to stabilize.

You might have an easier time stabilizing SunSugar F1, SunOrange F1, Esterina F1, or others. I don't know of particular attempts to stabilize them, let alone as many as for SunGold F1.

I think a community effort would help. The more people you have doing it, the more likely someone is to get results. However, people have different opinions, and notice different things. Tomatoes taste and produce differently in different conditions. So, while they might seem the same as SunGold F1 to one person, they might seem very different to another person in another region. So every seeming success would need to be evaluated by many other growers.

Getting a community effort going would be the hard part (almost as hard as stabilizing the tomato, probably).

If it's any consolation, I plan to grow SunGold F1 next year, and save F2 seeds to grow the next year. If I get something that particularly matches the F1, I'll probably let people here know, and the same with the F3+ generations.

This year, I am growing Esterina F1, though. Next year I may grow Esterina F2, and I plan to grow SunOrange F2 next year, too (among others).

As far as legalities go—

If a plant is has a utility patent, you can't even save seeds from it or any of its descendants, let alone stabilize it. Very few tomatoes have utility patents, but they exist. Expect to find them almost exclusively among corporate tomatoes, especially if they're genetically engineered.

If a plant has a plant patent (which is not the same as a utility patent), or is PVP, or PVPAF, you might be able to stabilize it legally. It depends. Breeding entirely new varieties from it is generally legal, but trying to immitate the F1 as is, can be illegal in at least some cases, if not all. Very many commercial F1 hybrids are PVP or PVPAF. PVP may be more restrictive in some states than others. Sellers are required by law to say if their seeds are PVP (but some of them don't say their PVP varieties are PVP, and you probably shouldn't buy those seeds from them, especially if they're supposed to be F1 hybrids; if they don't even know they're PVP, they might not be the true F1 hybrid anyway; they might be F2 or who knows; sellers have to get PVP seeds from an authorized source, and they require permission to sell them; so, if they don't say they're PVP, that's a good sign they might not have permission). Growers can save their own PVP seeds, but they can't sell or give them away. F2 seeds are no longer PVP (but you still can't try to recreate the original F1 and stabilize it, or something akin to that).

If the breed name is trademarked, you can't use it for the stabilized version. So, even if you can legally stabilize it, you shouldn't call it the same thing, especially if you ever expect anyone to sell the seeds of your tomato.

If it's a public domain tomato you can stabilize it legally.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#3

Post: # 24508Unread post Nan6b
Sun Jul 05, 2020 2:11 pm

I agree with what Shule says.
1. In order to make a stable new tomato whose seeds will always breed true, producing tomatoes with the same characteristics every time, starting with F1, you have to grow out 8 generations. That means F8 is stable.
2. If you breed an F1 (like Sungold) to any other variety (either a stable open pollinated one like Brandywine or another F1 like Big Beef), the resulting seeds will be a new F1, making a new F1 plant. With no more cross-breeding, you can grow out 8 generations and the F8 is stable.
3. If you start with 2 stable varieties, which breed true (not F1 or F-anything, but open pollinated) the F1's will all be identical. The F2's will all be different. There's math to show how this works. (I love math, but I'll spare you). I crossed Anna Maria's Heart (large pink heart) with Hardin's Miniature (double dwarf plant with pointed red cherries). The F1's were all larger than Hardin's Mini with large red cherry tomatoes. Identical. The F2's were all different: big plants, small plants, pink fruit, red fruit, round fruit, hearts, elongated fruit, with or without points, etc. Of course there were a couple that looked identical to each other, because you can only shuffle the genes so many different ways.)
4. If you start with one F1 and one OP (stable, open-pollinated), the F1's will all be different. If you cross two F1's, the resulting F1's will all be different.
5. The problem is getting what you want. For example, if you want to grow out Sungolds for eight generations to get a stable Sungold, you'd have to grow a zillion in the first generations. The reason is that you'll have to grow enough to get one that has all the characteristics of the original Sungold. Say you just want one with exactly the same taste. You might not get that same taste in any of the ones you grow as F2's. You will if you grow enough F2's, though. So you keep seeds from the F2 with the Sungold taste. Then you grow those out (F3) until you find one that has the Sungold taste. It might be the very first one you try, but it could also take hundreds. Keep tasting and saving seeds. By the time you get to F7, grow them out, and pick the Sungold tasting one (F8) you now have the stable seeds. The varieties get less varied as the generations go on, so for example, there's more variation in the F3's than in the F7's.
6. Some people on this forum have been saying their F2 seeds (saved seeds from F1 hybrids like Sungold) are identical to the F1's. I don't know why this would be true. The math doesn't support it. However, my mom had 2 Sungold F2 plants that yielded fruit identical to Sungold. They grew side-by-side with F1 Sungolds and were tasted together. No difference. (I do have F3 seeds from those F2 plants if anyone wants them, PM me). There may be some mechanism that makes this happen. (I can think of one: if one of the parents has sterile male parts, or sterile female parts, or one parent has one and the other parent has the other, then that sterility would only allow certain variations to show up in the F2, for example).
7. If you are only trying to select for one characteristic, say, taste- it's easier to find the plant with that characteristic than if you're trying to find two or more characteristics. If you want a great-tasting pink heart on a double-dwarf (micro) plant, its many many time harder to find that and you have to grow out many many more plants. If you have a bunch of people helping you, it would be easier to find it. The Cross- Hemisphere Dwarf Project did that: people from USA, Australia, and probably other places all started crossing dwarf with regular size plants to create dwarf plants with full-sized, good-tasting fruits in different colors. It was a massive growout effort that used a zillion volunteers.
8. There are some open-pollinated varieties that are said to be open-pollinated versions of F1's. Ambrosia Gold is supposed to be a stabilized form of Sungold, as is Solguld, and others. Nobody seems to have gotten it exactly the same. Big Beef has an open-pollinated form called Big Beef OP; perhaps it performs the way Big Beef does and perhaps it tastes the same (I don't know), but I doubt it has the disease resistance of Big Beef F1.
9. There is a small difference in the F1 plants you will get depending on which one is the female plant (receives the pollen, make the tomato) and which one is the pollen provider.
10. It's tough to physically cross-pollinate a plant. You have to cut the anthers (pollen producer parts) off of the female plant before they are mature, then get pollen from the male plant and rub it on the female flower and hope you don't get any other pollen from any other source landing on the female flower. When you collect seeds from that tomato, you hope you've gotten the cross pollination but you can't be certain if all seeds are cross-pollinated F1's. There is a trick you can do to be able to tell if you have gotten a successful cross. (I'm going to explain this with no technical terminology.) You can choose your mother plant so that certain characteristic of the F1 seedlings will be different from the mother plant, if you have successful cross. Where the mother and the dad are different, you can do this. Some of the characteristics are as follows:
---Mother plant is potato-leaved (PL) and dad is regular-leaved (RL). The tomato from the PL mother will produce seedlings that are RL if the cross was successful. But it can't be done vice versa: PL has to be the mother and RL has to be the father for this to work. Ditto for the examples below.
---Mother is dwarf and dad is regular sized plant. Successfully crossed seedlings will be larger.
---Mother gives pink, white, yellow or green tomatoes and dad gives red tomatoes. The mother plant will give you a pink (or white, yellow, green) tomato but the seeds will yield red tomatoes. This isn't as good of an indicator simply because you have to wait for fruit to ripen before you know if your cross took.There are probably other characteristics like this but I can't think of them right now.
Example: When I crossed my Anna Maria's Heart with Hardin's Mini, I wanted the very dwarf Hardin's Mini to be the mother so the seedlings of a successful cross would be larger than Hardin's Mini and I'd know immediately which ones were F1's versus those that weren't. However, I couldn't get any pollination that way. In desperation, I let Hardin's Mini be the dad and Anna Maria the mother. Anna is a big plant and the babies were big plants, so I had to wait to see the fruit (Mom Anna has pink fruit and dad Hardin's has red fruit.) I did get red fruit, so I knew the cross was successful.
11. You asked "Is it a good idea to cross-pollinate F1 with another F1 variety, for instance sungold with Honeycomb or Orange Paruche to get more chance of getting better genes to replace old and bad ones?" You can do that. It gives you a lot of genes to work with. Let's say you like Sungold but it cracks easily. You could cross it with anything that doesn't crack easily, to try to produce a Sungold tasting fruit that doesn't crack as easily. Or if you have a lot of stuff you like in Orange Paruche and Sungold & want to combine them. But you're starting with a mix that has everything you like about each and everything you hate about each. Double the good and double the bad. Starting with 2 F1's means you will have to grow out many more plants to find that perfect one. Many more. If you don't mind collecting hundreds of seeds and growing out one generation of seeds over several years to find the Perfect Plant, or if you have a lot of helpers so you can grow out so many over a single season, go for it.
12. Without getting into the math, it's kind of like this. There's a certain amount of difficulty in finding one characteristic- taste for example. It's four times as hard to find two characteristics- (like taste and no-cracking). It's 16 times as hard to find 3 characteristics (taste, non-cracking, and color). And if you want large size, the genes are so complicated that, to get from a small size to a large size, it's many times more complicated, as if you were adding several more characteristics at once. (Going from large to small is much easier).
13. You asked about reverse engineering a hybrid by looking at what you get in the growout generations. You could theoretically come up with all the different qualities the parent plants had by looking at the qualities you find in the offspring. (Early Girl has a potato-leaved parent, for example). I do not think you could predict which qualities came from which parent. Also, many of the ones used in popular hybrids are varieties you will never find. For example, ones where the female plant produces no pollen. Nobody sells those. But it's easy to cross-pollinate such a thing: any seeds at all must be from cross pollination. That's a plant that has probably not got a name, just a number. It's propagated by cuttings so they have a whole greenhouse of them (most are done in India, I think).

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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#4

Post: # 24940Unread post Amateurinawe
Thu Jul 09, 2020 2:11 am

Wow, those two post extremely helpful to another newbie here. Just starting out with crossing and the numbers are bewildering to get your "ideal" tomato. Not to say the timescale and effort. Been doing plenty of reading (wish I'd chosen plant biology in my younger years) and hoping to avoid silly mistakes (there just isn't time :-) ). I wonder if either of you can assist with a couple of other questions. Is there anywhere where one can see various traits and their likely dominance or reccessiveness over other traits or does it not work like that (i.e. Red tending to favour over yellow). Is there anywhere one can find out of certain characteristics and the result of more than one gene (and hence don't even try it unless you've got a zillion plants) ?

If I've posted in the wrong place please tell me -

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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#5

Post: # 24961Unread post Nan6b
Thu Jul 09, 2020 9:22 am

I think lots of folks would like to see a list of what's dominant over what. But it's so complex, the answer's not always that easy. Often more than one pair of genes is involved. Telling us what you are aiming to get, and what varieties (if any) that you particularly want to start with, would be helpful. Or tell us what cross you have, and we can tell you the possible outcomes, to some degree.

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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#6

Post: # 24985Unread post Amateurinawe
Thu Jul 09, 2020 2:07 pm

Hi nan6b,

Thanks for clarifying. My initial crosses are indigo rose and a large Italian plum called Harry's plum. Did some others but merely practice to see if technique works. I might take the other crosses with indigo rose but need to plan space and would rather focus on more of a single cross to get better quantities for selection. I'm totally new to this, just theoretical reading at the moment so all help extremely welcome.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#7

Post: # 24994Unread post bower
Thu Jul 09, 2020 4:50 pm

Kudos Shule and Nan for answering so many complicated questions!

Some thoughts:
F1 vs F2: I'm guessing this statement is about 'heterosis' effects - extra vigor, high yield etc. All I can say is I have done lots of crosses and I have rarely or never seen vigor or yield in the F1 that exceeded the parents by much. Not enough that I couldn't put it down to conditions in the season.
Heterosis in F1 for yield/vigor involves some very specific genes. It is basically a combination of a weakly fruiting parent with a strong one, if I understand correctly what I've read. The heterozygous condition for those specific genes results in a higher yield. Since many of the F2 will also have a heterozygous condition, they can be 'as good' as an F1.
Boiling that down to reality, in a cross of several OP's such as you described, I would not expect anything too unusual in the F1 in the way of 'heterosis', unless you stumbled on a pair of parents that had that combination of the specific gene and its wild type.
And there is no guarantee, when you grow out seed from an F1 that was bred for heterosis, that you will pick the F2 seeds that happen to be heterozygous like the parent, hence the caution and fact that you cannot expect those seeds to perform like the parent F1. But it could be that 1/2 your plants are heterozygous and 'as good as F1' for that specific heterosis effect.
There have been many people who tried to grow out and stabilize a Sungold OP, and IDK if it is possible, but new variants are stabilized from time to time that hope to fill that gap - check out the ones that are available and whether they are close enough. There is a 'faint hope' clause that applies, it could happen, right? Very difficult project, many years have been invested by many people without a satisfactory result. Or you may decide that the OP offspring are good enough to substitute - that is a matter of taste, expectations, and environment.
OTOH your second question, about crossing an F1 to something else. On the basis of experience I would absolutely encourage you to do this. Cross unstable generations and you may really find something remarkable. Those unstable, multi-parent crosses produce F2s that are highly diverse, and the instability seems to shake up and promote unusual genetic recombination. Tom Wagner turned me onto this idea, I experimented with it, and I loved the results. So do! Make multiple crossed lines, and cross them. If an F2 or F3 isn't going exactly where you wanted with all the desired traits, cross it to something else that has a trait you wanted. And so on.
It may take longer to settle down your final OP that is stable, but you have a better chance of completing that journey to something that has all the traits you wanted.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#8

Post: # 25176Unread post Shule
Sat Jul 11, 2020 6:07 pm

In researching Tom Wagner's tomatoes, I came across this picture, on archive.org, which I think relates to this thread! It'll show you many variations of fruit that can come in the F2 generation of a single cross (in this case Green Zebra x Blue P-20).

Now maybe all F2 hybrids aren't that diverse, but some of them can be.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#9

Post: # 25632Unread post Pippin
Wed Jul 15, 2020 3:52 pm

Nan6b wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 2:11 pm 12. Without getting into the math, it's kind of like this. There's a certain amount of difficulty in finding one characteristic- taste for example. It's four times as hard to find two characteristics- (like taste and no-cracking). It's 16 times as hard to find 3 characteristics (taste, non-cracking, and color). And if you want large size, the genes are so complicated that, to get from a small size to a large size, it's many times more complicated, as if you were adding several more characteristics at once. (Going from large to small is much easier).
Just wanted to share another perspective to the selection and propability issue. I am actually growing my first F2 family this summer, so I have been thinking this a lot.

People tend to stress the importance of growing huge amount of F2 in ordet to find the rare combinations at one go. Don’t get me wrong, I have some 120 F2 plants per cross, so I am trying to do the same thing here. However, I am still wondering what to choose for the next generation: do I really need to find the perfect combo with multiple characteristics in the F2 or should I select differently? The desired characteristics are often recessive and even when they are not all visible in F2, 50% of the plants should still have them. Saying it the other way round: it is surprisingly difficult to get rid of recessive genes if you want to loose them. Selecting for stable dominant characteristics is much more difficult than recessive because the heterozycotes have the same phenotype than homozychote dominants, that is 75% look the same.

It may be 16 times harder to find 3 characteristics if you try to do it in one season. But if you find 2 charasteristics now, you still have 50% chance to find the third one in F3. If you choose multiple 2 character combos in one season, the propability to find the third one in next season is pretty high.

If you are looking for yellow, green, black, pink, tangerine or brown tomatoes, don’t overlook the red ones if all other characters seem perfect. 50% of the reds have yellow, green etc recessive genes. If your cross have multiple of these recessive genes, it is very likely that none of the reds are stable and they will segregate to other colors in F3.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#10

Post: # 25656Unread post bower
Wed Jul 15, 2020 7:10 pm

Very true, Pippin. I have very limited space for growouts, so I have to work with smaller numbers. If looking for two recessives (or more) I will always save seed of any F2 plant that has just one of those traits, because I know that both could be present in the line.
The F3 generation is still very unstable (lots of heterozygosity) and it's not unusual for the second recessive to show up there.
A reason for saving seed from every F2 with one of the desired traits, you have the option of going back to try the other line if you hit a dead end. Another option is to grow out and cross two F2 siblings that each had one of the desired traits.

[mention]Amateurinawe[/mention] if you want to learn about tomato genetics, the TGRC is a great resource.
https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/dataf ... t=nav.html
Just click on the menu for genes, and it gives you a list.
Those that begin with a capital letter are dominant, those that begin with lower case letter are recessive.
I'm not sure if there is a shorthand like that for QTL's but it's just as well to start with the Mendelian... then afterwards figure out why it doesn't always work as expected. ;)
Submit a search for any gene on the list (other fields are not required), and it will provide a link in the left hand column, to the page of information about that gene, its phenotype, etc.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#11

Post: # 26380Unread post Bronx
Thu Jul 23, 2020 11:58 am

Wow, lots of great information in this thread. Here's what I have from my limited attempts at growing F2 tomatoes. This year I'm growing two Campari F2 and two Sugary Hybrid F2 plants.

The Campari (as I have read elsewhere) all seem to be the same tomato as the parent; between golf ball and tennis ball size, 2-3oz, good flavor.

The Sugary F2 is a different story. Both of my plants were seeds from the same tomato. The Sugary F1 tomato is oval, some call grape shape. Plant growth is somewhat compact indeterminate.

While both of my F2 plants seem to have the same growth pattern, one is producing large round cherry tomatoes and the other is producing both oblong and pear shaped cherries. They both taste good to me.

I don't know if I'll save seeds from any of these plants.

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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#12

Post: # 26544Unread post Amateurinawe
Sat Jul 25, 2020 2:32 pm

Thanks bowed

Really interesting thank you
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#13

Post: # 35220Unread post Amateurinawe
Sat Dec 05, 2020 3:04 pm

so just bumping this thread as it was so informative and now cycling back again to the next growing season.

I've crossed a number of varieties, some of them are just out of curiosity and because they are so wildly different - hence indigo rose and yellow pear and also indigo rose and costuluto forientino - just so that i might see some really obvious visible signs not that i was looking for any particular traits. I've done that with other varieties but am not pla nting those yet.

So, i figure i dont need to grow out the plants to full height but need to get a couple of trussess to fruit and to seetd to push forward to an f2. I dont want to grow full height as i want this space for other varieties such as mmmm and DR C M tribute.

Would i be better saving seed from multiple tomatoes from the f1 for the f2 growout or is it okay to use just the one tomatoe on the f1 - not sure how the ovule and the sperm combine in a single flower. Or is it safer to have multiple fruits and that way there is a good mix to put forward to f2.

Scared of the mathematics for multiple traits but as this is just experimental over some obvious characteristics then not too worried.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#14

Post: # 35233Unread post bower
Sat Dec 05, 2020 7:23 pm

All you need is one fruit from one F1 plant and you have your F2 ready to go. :) People always say to save as many F2 seeds as you can, but realistically if you save twice as many as you can possibly grow, you will probably have four times the number you actually decide to grow, which are left in your stash in perpetuity. So save as many seeds as you think you should have, all the fruit have an equal chance of combining the parent traits in an interesting way. You only need thousands of seeds if you're looking for something really rare, difficult due to linkage, and/or acres of land to plant the F2's into.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#15

Post: # 35252Unread post goodloe
Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:24 am

Interesting thread. Just for schlitz & giggles, I've been "dehybridizing" Chef's Choice Pink. I'll be growing the F4 in 2021.
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#16

Post: # 35361Unread post Cole_Robbie
Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:40 am

Regarding legality, there are hardly any protected tomato varieties. Traditional breeding techniques are not usually considered something that can be protected by intellectual property law.

Another point about ip law, it is all civil. No one goes to jail for violating it. The punishments are only monetary. Usually they are set at 3x the profit you made off using the trademark or patented idea. So if you are not making money, basically no one cares. It is not worth it to get a lawyer to sue you.

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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#17

Post: # 42439Unread post Doffer
Fri Mar 05, 2021 6:37 am

[mention]Nan6b[/mention] If Sungold F2 really tastes the same as Sungold F1, why is it so difficult to get an OP Sungold that tastes the same as Sungold F1?

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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#18

Post: # 42443Unread post mama_lor
Fri Mar 05, 2021 8:08 am

I haven't really read everything, but I would disagree that F2s are "as good" as F1s. Maybe some of them can be close, if you grow enough of the same f2, but if you grow a couple you might be severely disappointed. I have grown various commercial F2s, for example a large pepper last year, the f2 was so far away from the original in all aspects, even production, a complete waste of space. A close F2 would suggest the parents were quite close in the more visible aspects, which might happen, especially for varieties that contain a lot of recessive traits.

Scooty
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#19

Post: # 42494Unread post Scooty
Fri Mar 05, 2021 10:23 pm

The problem with all these responses is that "better" has never been consistently defined. How do you define "better"? What is the specific criteria? Even among breeders, this differs from project to project. Is it taste? Vigor? Are you talking about consistency among F1 vs F2?

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Barmaley
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Re: Is F1 alwais better than F2 and a newbie questions

#20

Post: # 45853Unread post Barmaley
Fri Apr 30, 2021 1:46 am

Will it be accurate to say that F8 is a stable plant or we need to go to F20 or something to get it completely stable?

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