Tomato Breeding

One of my favourite tomatoes is Japanese Black Trifele (spelled a few different ways).  They taste amazing, they usually crop heavily for me, they taste great, they are reasonably quick to mature, and did I mention they taste great?  They are one of the varieties I grow every year.  I really like them, but find they they are a bit small for my liking.

I can't grow every tomato variety I have every year so I have a bit of a rotation to refresh my seeds.  Some varieties are very good, but not good enough to be grown every year.  Another great tomato variety I grow some years are a much larger fruited tomato, they taste great, they usually crop well, but the tomatoes are a bit too large for my liking so don't get grown every year.

• Question: What would happen if you cross one of the best tasting tomatoes that is a touch too small (such as Japanese Black Trifele) with a great tasting tomato that is much larger? 
• Answer: You get an amazing tasting tomato that is just the right size (as well as a whole heap of other tomatoes of different sizes, some taste better than others).

This new tomato has an interesting colour, this year it had regular leaf but it may or may not still have recessive potato leaf genes because I have been selecting taste/size of fruit and ignoring all other traits.  Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of it sliced, the colour inside was dark and amazing.  I hope when I have stabilized this variety it retains this rich colour.

This year was a dreadful year for tomatoes in my garden.  Many varieties did not crop at all, some only provided 1 or 2 tomatoes, some gave very small crops.

This new tomato was one of the first to ripen, being so early in the season I thought nothing of eating them as I figured that I would save seed later in the season.  Then the heat or something hit and I only saved seed from one or two fruit.  I wish I had more seeds, but I have what I have.  This isn't great, but it will have to do.

Great tasting tomato - top

Great tasting tomato - side

Great tasting tomato - bottom

Assuming all goes well, it will be a few years before this is a stable variety.  Stabilising a tomato variety usually takes 7 to 10 generations, sometimes more.

Stablising a variety can be done in a year or two if you play around with double haploids, but I don't think I will do that for this variety.  I plan to grow a few of them next year and continue to select the best ones.

My aim is to produce tomatoes that fruit like this one.  They are the right size, they look nice, they are soft, they smell nice, they crop well, and most importantly they are absolutely delicious.  Everything else, such as fruit colour, leaf shape etc, are not really important.

I sell seeds of a few heirloom tomatoes through my for sale page.  I likely won't offer seeds of this one for a long time as they are not even close to being stable.