'Christoph' Tomato

Solanum lycopersicum

Origin: Maine

Improvement status: Breeding population

Seeds per packet: ~30

Germination tested 10/2024: 96%

Life cycle: Annual

This tomato is part of an ongoing breeding project aiming to develop new open-pollinated strains from the popular hybrid tomato called 'Crimson Crush.' We got our seed from our friend and collaborator Aaron Parker of Edgewood Nursery in Falmouth, Maine. Here's what Aaron says about this project:

"The varieties 'Phil', 'Shanne', and 'Christoph' are all separate dehybridizations of ‘Crimson Crush’ created by 3 seed savers. Each was selected for different attributes and each strain is a bit different. All are still fairly unstable and show a wide variety of forms and degrees of blight resistance. All varieties survived to the killing freeze with no blight mitigation strategies applied. 'Christoph' seemed to have the best blight resistance, but 'Phil' was the highest producer despite damage from blight, while 'Shanne' had a balance between productivity and blight resistance. All varieties produced medium to large fruits with nice bright red color and good tomato flavor. By growing these out and saving seeds from your favorite plants you could fairly quickly develop your own new variety of blight resistant tomato for your regional growing conditions, or keep the existing variety name and continue with the community work of open source seed development!"