home news forum careers events suppliers solutions markets expos directories catalogs resources advertise contacts
 
News Page

The news
and
beyond the news
Index of news sources
All Africa Asia/Pacific Europe Latin America Middle East North America
  Topics
  Species
Archives
News archive 1997-2008
 

University of New Hampshire scientist develops new cherry tomato - 'Rambling Rose' designed to grow in hanging baskets in greenhouses


Durham, New Hampshire, USA
September 29, 2015

UNH news release featured image

A University of New Hampshire scientist has developed a new cherry tomato designed to be grown in hanging baskets in greenhouses. Rambling Rose provides a new attractive pink fruit color not yet available in cherry tomatoes suitable for hanging basket production.

The new fruit was developed by Becky Sideman, a researcher with the NH Agricultural Experiment Station and extension professor of sustainable horticulture production, and her collaborators Elisabeth Hodgdon at the University of Vermont and Jennifer Noseworthy of Gordon College. Both are former UNH graduate students and worked on the development of Rambling Rose while at UNH.

Rambling Rose originated from self-pollinating a single hybrid Tumbler cherry tomato plant at UNH in 2009. Tumbler was selected as the parent material due to its desirable uniform growth and fruiting habit. Plant selections were made in subsequent generations using pedigree selection, choosing the best plants from the best families grown in both greenhouse and field settings until uniformity in plant and fruit phenotype was achieved in the seventh generation of plants.

“Our goal was to select plants with attractive and symmetrical branching, uniform leaf canopy, and plentiful fruit set. Because hanging basket tomatoes are grown not only for their yield, Rambling Rose was developed with aesthetics of vegetative growth in mind as well,” Sideman said.

Overall fruit quality, earliness, yield, and growth habit of Rambling Rose were comparable to or better than the commercially available cultivars evaluated in 2012 and 2013 in trials at UNH. Other cultivars evaluated include Lizzano, Terenzo, Tumbling Tom, Tumbler, Cherry Cascade, and Sweetheart of the Patio.

Those interested in seed trials or commercial seed production should contact Maria Emanuel, UNHInnovation associate director, at maria.emanuel@unh.edu.

The research findings are reported in the June 2015 issue of HortScience in the article “‘Rambling Rose’: A Pink-fruited Cherry Tomato for Hanging Basket Production.” This material is based upon work that is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under award number 228522.

Founded in 1887, the NH Agricultural Experiment Station at the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture is UNH’s original research center and an elemental component of New Hampshire's land-grant university heritage and mission. We steward federal and state funding, including support from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, to provide unbiased and objective research concerning diverse aspects of sustainable agriculture and foods, aquaculture, forest management, and related wildlife, natural resources and rural community topics. We maintain the Woodman and Kingman agronomy and horticultural farms, the Macfarlane Greenhouses, the Fairchild Dairy Teaching and Research Center, and the Organic Dairy Research Farm. Additional properties also provide forage, forests and woodlands in direct support to research, teaching, and outreach.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state's flagship public institution, enrolling 13,000 undergraduate and 2,500 graduate students.



More news from: University of New Hampshire


Website: http://www.unh.edu/

Published: October 1, 2015

The news item on this page is copyright by the organization where it originated
Fair use notice

 


Copyright @ 1992-2024 SeedQuest - All rights reserved