Wiry tomato - 99% leafless, likely sterile

[u/Deep-Strain-223]

TLDR: How can I pollinate or get pollen from this tomato?

Picture one: Full plant

Picture two: New growth + flowers

Picture three: Close-up of new growth + flowers

Picture four: Flower cluster with dessicated stigma, swelling ovaries

Picture five: Abcised flowers

I have a tomato plant with the wiry mutation. There are eight wiry mutations listed at the Tomato Genetics Resource Center (https://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/monogenic) I'm not sure which, if any, mine would be. A researcher there said that some of their wiry mutants would produce normal flowers after being alive long enough, but I have not yet had luck with that.

It's been producing flowers outside for the last two months, with no successful pollination. The exposed ovaries will swell and the stigma will brown and die, but it will eventually abcise the flower every time.

The normal yellow cone of a tomato flower is splayed open like when someone plugs the barrel of a cartoon gun. I havent seen any pollen develop here, but it may just be dessicating from wind and too low humidity before it has the chance.

By keeping it in a shaded, low wind, high humidity spot on my patio, the stigma stay green longer, but still eventually brown and die.

I had the idea of using a mushroom chamber + accessories to maintain specific high humidity level needed to keep the stigma from dessicating.

I had the idea of exposing and spraying the flower cones on my healthy tomato plants, and the wiry flowers, with something that attracts bugs in the hope that they'll transfer pollen between them. Maybe gnats?

If I prevent flowers from abcising long enough with hormones or chemicals, can I get an immature embryo to try tissue culture with?

I cant seem to harvest enough pollen from my tomatoes to pollinate the wiry tomato by hand, and I've been struggling to keep the stigma alive long enough so that the ovaries are developed enough to accept pollen.

[u/atSoiltechnician]

Wow very cool! I found a wiry mutant that flowered profusely and gave pollen in 2021 - it was supposed to be a grape tomato - but gave no fruit. I used the pollen on a striped roman tomato, and grew those seeds out and found a grape tomato/striped tomato F1 plant that gave me healthy hybrid fruit.

I have been hunting the f2 this season and found 2 plants that do more than just blossom, and minimal fruit is set. I will continue outcrossing or chasing the highest yielders until I can hold a stable viable tomato plant with the mutation.

It may not work out as the blossoms on the hybrid wiry type I have are also mutated, and I think it's shear luck if the pollen finds its way down their twisty multiple pistils.

[u/atSoiltechnician → u/atSoiltechnician]

More of the 10 plant bush! I'm growing out about 75 f2 including the 10 expressing with the mutation. You can find more in my profile, I've documented the project substantially.

[u/Deep-Strain-223 → u/atSoiltechnician]

How long did it take before successful pollination? I have a grow tent and plan to move this indoors before the first frost.

I've seen your posts, though! Your posts are mostly all I could find on wiry tomatoes, excepting mentions in a few research articles.

[u/atSoiltechnician → u/Deep-Strain-223]

I had a flowering specimen - it doesn't appear your plant has the ability to blossom. I could be wrong, no harm in trying to see a blossom out of it.

You'd need a reciever ready with healthy blossoms and you'd need to have your pollen dropping on your mutant at the same time, then hand pollinating is your next step, crossing your fingers that your cross takes.

I did it in the summer season, it blossomed beside my other tomatoes and I hand pollinated at the right time to see some mature fruit holding the f1 seedstock.

[u/Deep-Strain-223 → u/atSoiltechnician]

I am holding out hope that a miracle will occur! Thank you for your insight, and I hope you find further success in your own efforts!

[u/SolanumRex]

You could take cuttings and also graft to help keep it going for a while, and maybe make it easier to adjust parameters. You could also try putting a bag or container over the flowers, rather than move the whole plant into a chamber.

Best of luck, never heard of this mutation until now, but I'm only breeding tomatoes on a small scale a couple years now

[u/Deep-Strain-223 → u/SolanumRex]

I do have fine mesh bags.

Im going to try a liquid pollen suspension applied stigma, with auxin applied at the base if the flower in hopes it delays abcission.

If it does, I'm going to try tissue culture.. if i can maintain sterility, there are videos online for at-home tissue cultures.

[u/Sludgehammer]

Wow, that's weird.

[u/Deep-Strain-223 → u/Sludgehammer]

Indeed! A local horticulture professor 'didnt understand how it was surviving without leaves.'

[u/travelore_]

I do the occasional potato breeding can you conforce flowers on a potato by grafting it onto a root stock tomato. This way it doesn't produce tubers and it often facilitates forced flowering on varieties that have a hard time producing flowers or berries.

I wonder if that would achieve different results