workhorse_01
Well-Known Member
look john ( - = minus as in cut the tobacco stamen ).... LOL. I aint chewin no queermobaccy . It would be cool if at least the citrus flavor would carry over.
Hazards or benifits from cross pollination of tobacco plant varietys.
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Steve2md
Well-Known Member
and back to "Tomacco".......
Boboro
Well-Known Member
Sombody should graft a tomato plant on top of a tobbaco plant. Just for kicks!
I did.. last year. I got the idea from Homer Simpson. He accidentally invented Tomaccy. It was a big hit, people became addicted to his "tomatoes" My tomacco plant didn't make it. I did a crappy job of grafting. I've grafted quite a few apple and pear trees but the tomato/tobacco was tricky. If I do it this year I'll get someone to help hold the two in place while I wrap it with grafting tape.
My Dad did that. He only had room for a few trees so me made each variety grow anything my mother requested. I liked apples and peaches but he had a pear and cherry tree also. I thought an apple tree that bore different color fruits at different times was normal.
As an aside. I just got some fresh rhubarb. Gonna stew it today. Can anybody smell fresh rhubarb pie on the breeze? (Yeah, You can tell the wife I still use lard for my crusts.)
John
Steve2md
Well-Known Member
the question still comes to bear, are the leaves of a tomacco smoke able? can you actually eat the fruit? is there a flavor difference to the fruit or leaves???? inquiring mind must know the answers!!!
I had rhubard years ago, but the plants were too close to the apple trees and eventually too much shade. Luv rhubarb pies and wish I still had the plants - gonna have to get some new ones. Lard is the only way to make pie crust.
Rayshields
Well-Known Member
Didn't know you could make pie crusts with anything but LARD.
BarG
Founding Member
Could you graft a tomatillo plant to a tomato plant. I only bought one before I found you need to to cross pollinate and I can't find anymore without taking a road trip.
I believe the way it works is a tomato grafted onto a tobacco rootstock will yield nicotine containing fruit and leaves. I believe there is some fear out there that no one knows what the nicotine levels would be in a tomato grafted as such. I would be a little afraid to eat a tomacco and smoking the leaves would probably taste terrible too.
Steve2md
Well-Known Member
since you can't safely eat tomat leaves, I would probably shy away from smoking them, but I wonder if the flavor of the fruit is altered. a little nibble would likely not be a fatal dose of nicotine...hmmmm maybe an experiment for this fall/winter...
Last year, I grew a single purple tomatillo. (It was started from seed, and the other seedlings died.) The plant grew to about 7', and produced 3 dozen small tomatillos. It was trellised in two steel tomato cones, wired together wide-end to wide-end.
I believe the tomatillo is more closely related to the ground cherry than to the tomato.
Bob
Grundle
Well-Known Member
I still think this is possible, but it will take some work. You will need to isolate the gene responsible for citrus flavoring and then introduce it into the tobacco DNA. Reintroducing this into the nucleus of a tobacco cell and then growing the resultant plant.
They recently did this to create a fluorescent (or glowing) tobacco plant. http://biol1020glowingtobacco.blogspot.com/
Honestly I don't think this is feasible for a hobbyist, since you would need a full blown lab and some serious equipment, but it is novel to think about.
Tutu
Well-Known Member
I know this topic is rather old but I am really curious as to wether you managed to give this a shot or wether blooming of the plants was to far apart? Really interested to learn more about the ontopic discussion here
ChinaVoodoo
Moderator
I read the links. I am curious about whether you subsequently grew the Papante-Little Dutch or Mt Pima-Little Dutch crosses.
Tutu
Well-Known Member
Ah I had seen that first one which is very informational on the theory. Thumbs up big time. Going to have a good look at your 2012 log now then, thanks Bob!
I grew neither of them. Because they would be F1 crosses, I would have needed to plant many (say 30 to 100) of each of the two crosses, in order to see the range of hybrid traits. Since Mt. Pima as well as Papante seemed to offer no particular traits that would have been likely to improve Little Dutch, I elected to satisfy my curiosity by simply concluding that both of them were N. tabacum, and not N. rustica.
To clarify, though both Mt. Pima and Papante present the same general appearance as Little Dutch, they are lacking in Little Dutch's distinctive "wood and leather" aroma, and are not nearly as nice to smoke. They taste like "primitive" tobacco.
Bob
Levi Gross
Well-Known Member
I was under the same impression and now seek an answer to this.
Levi Gross
Well-Known Member
So if I were to just go with the natural order of things and had multiple variants in close proximity to each other and all of said plants went to seed is there any guarantee that they would in fact cross pollinate and make hybrids or mutate? The few years that I have been growing I always try to allow one or two plants from only one variant to go to seed so that I may have more seed to grow with in the years to come. Due to only having 1 acre to grow on I am afraid of ruining any pure strains already in possession by letting more than one variant pollinate at a time. Any wisdom or experience, feedback would be wonderful
In a blossom, the pistil contains the ova (which have to be fertilized), and the stamen produce the pollen (which will fertilize the ova). Both are found within the same blossom. If isolated (bagged), then a single blossom will fertilize itself--that is, its own pollen will fertilize its own ova.
In deliberate crossing, you establish an isolated female by manually opening the blossom a day or two before it would naturally open, and physically removing the stamen (I believe there are exactly 5 per blossom.), leaving only the pistil in the center. The female-only blossom is then sealed with some paper masking tape. The intended male contributor is obtained by using the pollen from a different variety plant, and transferred on, say, a camel hair brush, to the female-only blossom, which is then resealed until the blossom falls off the developing seed pod.
To produce crosses in both directions (female A and male B, as well as female B and male A), you perform the same approach with each variety. Some of the metabolic determinant genes--contained within the mitochondria--will stay with the female (the plant producing the seed) for each cross.
It might be interesting to do both crosses between two dramatically different variety conformations. For example, crossing in both directions between Big Gem and Little Dutch, might demonstrate if the short short stalk, close node spacing and long, narrow leaves of Little Dutch remain with the female parent Little Dutch. Would "Little Gem" develop on the Little Dutch female, and "Big Dutch" appear on the Big Gem female, or would it not matter much? Making a taller, wider-leafed tobacco with the smoking qualities of Little Dutch would be a boon.
I still worry about the need to have ready blossoms simultaneously on two different varieties. Last season, the blossom time varied as much as a month between the earliest varieties and the latest. This may be mitigated by the long flowering time of some of the varieties.
Bob
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