A Look Back at the Tomato Breeders Roundtable

J.W. Scott¹ with contributions from Allan Stoner², Paul Thomas³, and Jim Strobel⁴

¹University of Florida, IFAS, Gulf Coast Research & Education Center, 14625 CR 672, Wimauma, FL 33598, USA email: jwsc@ufl.edu

²Retired-formerly USDA, Beltsville MD,³Retired-formerly PetoSeed Co., ⁴Retired, formerly University of Florida, Tropcial Research & Education Center

Introduction.

The Tomato Breeders Roundtable (TBRT) has been the premier meeting in North America for public and industry scientists interested in tomato improvement and it attracts researchers from around the world. The TBRT has a proud tradition but there is no institution or governing body that carries it forward from year to year. Rather the meeting is passed on from host to host analogous to a baton being passed between runners in a relay race. Accordingly, hosts of the meeting often feel more tired once their meeting is finished than a relay racer does after the race! Since there is no institution, there are no official archives and before all information on the history of the TBRT is lost, a retrospective seemed appropriate because modern day tomato researchers owe much to our innovative predecessors.

Be a part of this work in progress.

Of course the TBRT predates the electronic age of personnel computers and the internet. This article will take advantage of the present time period by being electronically interactive with any of you who can help with this article. Information presented will be incomplete and there may be some inaccuracies although the latter will hopefully be minimal. Hard copy will be in the 2007 TGC but I ask your help if you can make additions/corrections. Send information to me (see contact information above) and it will be updated for the web version that will be on the TGC website. So please consider this a working draft and thanks in advance for any assistance in making this historical review the best it can be. I can send an electronic version for editing in track changes if requested. If you know of someone who may have information but is not likely to see this, please send them a copy for their input. Together we can make this review the best it can be. All corrections and additions are welcome. I apologize for any inaccuracies or omissions, I did what I could with information at my disposal.

 Abstracts and programs of recent meetings will be posted on the TGC website. It would be possible to list programs and abstracts from at least some of the earlier meetings on the TGC website over time if there is interest. Let me know what you think about this.

Happy 50^th Anniversary

Early information was obtained by contacting the contributors listed above. Allan Stoner mentioned that the impetus for the formation of TBRT was a group of people primarily interested in the Midwest canning industry in the 1950’s. A search of early TGC’s for information struck gold when an article by Mark Tomes of Purdue was found in The Report of the Tomato Genetics Cooperstive in 1958-volume 8:4. This report by Dr. Tomes follows:

The Tomato Breeders Group

            Several years ago an informal organization of tomato breeders was started by those attending a field day at Purdue University.  Present were experiment station and university personnel from states adjacent to Indiana and tomato breeders from commercial seed houses and commercial processing corporations in the area.  Dr. E.C. Stevenson of Purdue was asked to be chairman of the first steering committee which was charged with setting up a round table discussion of certain practical breeding problems.  Since Drs. Alexander and Paddock had held an informal field day the prior year at Ohio, Drs. Thompson and McCollum volunteered to act as hosts for the group.  Accordingly, a Tomato Breeders Round Table was held at Illinois in January of 1957.  With the help of the Raw Products Research Bureau of the National Canner’s Association, this meeting received somewhat wider publicity.  Attendance included about 40 tomato breeders from areas as distant as Nebraska, New York and New Jersey.  A new steering committee composed of representatives from the seed trades, the commercial processing corporations, and the universities was charged with setting up a combined field-day, discussion sessions for the summer of 1957.  The Ohio group volunteered to sponsor the group and the August 8-9 session at Wooster resulted.  Attendance at this session totaled around 70 with breeders present from areas as distant as Cuba, Canada, Texas, and California

            To date the Breeders group has operated on an informal basis.  No formal organization exists, no proper name has been assigned, no dues are assessed, and no requirement for attendance exists other than an interest in the solution of practical tomato breeding problems.

            Those who founded the group had no intention of sponsoring another national organization.  Rather, they were interested in the stimulation and practical knowledge that might be derived from the association of individuals who share a common problem.  The original invitations were largely an area affair.  If the group has grown, it attests only to a more widespread interest in the benefits to be derived from such an association.

            The group included those who feel that a solution to current tomato problems can best be achieved by the mutual discussion of methods.  Others feel that methods can best be discussed with the materials at hand.  To date we have had both methods sessions, and field-day, discussion meetings.  Much of value in a how-to sense has been derived.  Some cooperation has been stimulated, and considerable knowledge of who is doing what, how, and why has been gained.

            The question whether this group might conflict with TGC was discussed at an early meeting.  The feeling of the group was that no conflict would result since the emphasis of the two groups was different.

            A session for 1958 is in the planning stage.  Dr. Munger kindly consented to act as sponsor for the group at Cornell in connection with their 1958 vegetable days.  Recently, however, we have had a number of requests asking that the session be scheduled in or near Indiana just preceding or following the AIBS session at Bloomington in order that travel might be reduced for those wishing to attend.  An announcement will be sent to all those who have indicated an interest by past attendance.

For the steering committee,

                                                                                    Mark L. Tomes

It can be seen from Tomes’ report that the first reference for the group to meet under the name “Tomato Breeders Round Table” was for a meeting at Illinois in 1957. Thus, 2007 marks the 50^th Anniversary of the Tomato Breeders Roundtable!! As for the name, “Round Table” was used for 30 years until 1988 when Mike Courtney was host and used the word “Roundtable”. The single word has been in favor ever since.

The Meetings.

Table 1 lists meeting dates, locations and program chairs or hosts. Note there are gaps where some of you may be able to add information and there may also be some omissions or corrections that need to be made. I started going to the TBRT in 1976 and have reasonably good information for most meetings since then.

The TBRT actually met twice in 1957 but settled in to meeting once a year until 1979. There used to be steering and program committees appointed to carry out the meetings. According to Allan Stoner, the Food Processors initially kept the mailing list and treasury. After that Bill Hepler did it when he was at Penn State and then Allan Stoner maintained he records for several years in the 1970’s. Since the 1981 meeting, mailing lists and extra meeting funds have been passed on to the host of each meeting. Of the early meetings Allan Stoner recalled “Initially, and for the first several years, the TBRT met at the LaSalle Hotel in Chicago in February.  Later someone suggested in would be a good idea to meet in a warmer climate in Feb and also be able to see some tomatoes when we met, thus the meeting sites started moving around each year (not always to where there were tomatoes growing at the time; Columbus, OH, Indianapolis, College Park MD, etc.)”.   

            Paul Thomas of PetoSeed kindly provided this synopsis of the early years. “The first meeting (sic) was held in Cleveland in 1959.  At that time there was a revolution going on with tomatoes, a lot happening and there were individuals in both the land grant colleges and industry that felt the need for such a group. Mechanical harvesting of processing tomatoes was in the process of making its debut.  Michigan State and UC Davis were the primary universities in the development of harvesters and tomato varieties for this program. Along with the mechanical harvest of tomatoes was work with disease resistance of the tomato.  All of these programs were expanding in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In addition, the use of F-1 hybrid tomatoes for the commercial trade was making its appearance.  This transition from O.P.’s to F-1’s was initiated primarily by Peto Seed Co. and the Joseph Harris Seed Co. As you can see, there was a lot going on in the industry and there was a definite need for an organization such as TBRT to help coordinate this change and it was a great way for scientists to meet and exchange material and ideas.  In 1960, the next meeting of TBRT was moved to the La Salle Hotel in downtown Chicago where it remained for a number of years.  It was felt this was more or less the center of the U.S. and accessible for people from the east, west, and south to meet. The early meetings were primarily along the practical applied type research. This seemed to be where the greatest need was. After the first few years in Chicago, it was decided to move the meetings around to various cities.  Some of the early cities we visited were Denver, CO; Bradenton, FL; Homestead, FL; San Francisco, CA; and also Sacramento, CA.  At about this time frame there were over 200 people working with tomatoes in almost all the land grant colleges, even Nebraska, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming of all places.  There was a great deal of interest particularly in the mechanical harvest programs that were going on.  This was really a great period to be involved in the industry.  A lot was going on and looking back a great deal was accomplished and the total industry, both fresh market and processing changed.”

            Jim Stobel had these comments: “While the early years of the TBRT involved principally processing interests, programs such as ours in Fla. were enhanced in many ways by the TBRT meetings and the day to day cooperation that originated at such meetings. In summary, the major benefit of this meeting of research personnel from the University and private business sector was the early stage sharing of valuable information and germplasm for all, of the acceleration progress for individual programs (and growers) by months or years. As everyone knows, publication and variety releases take years to become part of the communications network, the TBRT provided a valuable forum for all who participated”. We can all agree that the climate of free germplasm exchange has certainly changed over the last several decades!

            As mentioned the TBRT was an annual meeting until1979. Several things were changing during this era: there was a decline in public breeding programs which provided a major share of the presentations at the meetings; the Midwestern canning industry, so important to the formation of the TBRT, was rapidly losing acreage and factories; and biotechnology was being born and these scientists went to other meetings to present their findings. For several years there were discussions as to whether the TBRT should meet once a year or every two years. This was finally resolved when it became a trend to meet about every 1 ½ years although the actual times of the meetings are determined in large part by the host of the next meeting. As can be seen in Table 1 all meetings have been in North America with most in the USA except for one in Canada, two in Mexico, and one in Guatemala.

As indicated, the early meetings dealt largely with sharing practical methods for crop improvement during an exciting era when research published in the TGC and elsewhere was making the tomato a model genetic crop. There was more discussion at TBRT’s than most meetings with the presentations being less formal as indicated by the name Round Table. Over the years the meetings have become more formal with a higher percentage of research presentations, but panel discussions and extensive questioning are still cornerstones of this meeting that sets it apart from most scientific meetings. Area reports are presented from around the world to keep the group up to date with emerging disease, variety, and other issues. The Tomato Crop germplasm Committee regularly meets at the TBRT and updates are given to the group on its activities. There are also reports from the germplasm center at Geneva, NY and Davis, CA as well as a brief report from the TGC Editor. With the advance of molecular technology many presentations are now molecular in nature  but still with applied goals in mind for MAS etc. With the tomato genome presently being sequenced future meetings will likely have more and more functional genomics presentations that will be aimed at improved breeding efficiency. More basic genomics studies will be for the most part presented elsewhere.

The Pioneers.

One of the goals of this paper is to pay tribute to “our tomato breeding forefathers”. Although some key people will be left out that should not preclude mentioning some of the key figures who got the TBRT going and made it successful. Allan Stoner provided the following narrative: “I am pretty sure that the group was formed by a group of Experiment Station tomato breeders from several Midwestern states. Of course at that time most states had a tomato breeding program and some (Ohio, Florida, California) had two or more. My recollection is that people like Walter Brown -Ohio, Mark Tomes and E.C. Stevenson or Ken Johnson -Purdue, Shig Honma-Michigan, Anson Thompson or his predecessor at Illinois, Vic Lambeth -Missouri , Currence -Minnesota, etc. I am certain there were other Midwestern breeders involved and there may have very well been breeders from other regions involved in starting the organization as well. The National Canners Assn , later the National Food Processors Assn, was involved for many years and maintained the mailing list and collected registration fees, etc. Charles Mahoney, then Ed Crosby, and Bill Hollis were involved from the NCA. When I went to my first meeting in 1964, there were attendees from all over the country -Jack Hanna and Paul Smith from CA, Jim Walter and Jim Strobel from FL, Paul Leeper from TX, Carroll Barnes -Clemson, etc. There were also several processing company breeders such as Walter Virgin from Del Monte, Charlie John from Heinz, Larry Holl and Colen Wyatt from Libbys,  Moore and ? (famous for recording bird calls) from Campbell Soup, etc. There were also some seed company breeders such as Paul Thomas, Tom Castle, a guy named Scott you may have known and Carl Cadregari from Harris. Other than Canadian breeders from Guelph and Beaver Lodge, Canada, I don't recall any foreign participants until later years. 

            Jim Strobel mentioned cooperating with “Charlie John and Colon Wyatt of the H.J. Heinz Co. as well as with George Reynard and John Moore of the Campbell Soup Co. to develop stocks with a greater diversity of vine and fruit characteristics such as advances in fruit color, firmness, and jointless pedicel. We also cooperated with Paul Smith of U. of California, L.J. Alexander of Ohio State, and Jim Gilbert of Hawaii whose work in fresh market tomatoes for a variety of cultural situation and disease resistance were highly significant” Jim especially mentioned  Jim Walter for his multiple disease resistant breeding work at the University of Florida. TBRT members paid tribute to Dr. Walter with a signed plaque at the 1968 meeting after his untimely death.

Paul Thomas adds “There were a number of memorable scientists that attended these early meetings.  Of course, most were those that fit the ‘character’ designation.  These included Prof. T.O. Graham of Guelph, Ontario Canada, P.A. Young of Texas, Charlie John of J.H. Heinz Company and, of course, if you wanted to, you could include your dad “Scottie” in this group.” If you will indulge me I will add that as a boy interested mostly in sports I do have distinct memories of my father going to this meeting called the Tomato Breeders Round Table in Chicago in the winter. It was due to the Round Table  in the name that it stuck with me over all the other types of meetings my father took off to. I always felt he had a good time at the meetings and although I’m sure the fun was harmless it was probably best that my mother didn’t know everything about the trips. Later, one of my fond memories was attending the TBRT in Culiacan, Mexico in 1978 with my father (& my mother who was also there).

The Future. With so many intriguing tomato problems yet to be solved the TBRT should thrive for many decades to come. This will depend on the next generations of tomato researchers accepting the ‘tomato baton’ and carrying on the legacy briefly outlined here. From what I see from all the clever young people working on tomato the prospects for the TBRT are bright indeed.

Table 1.  Dates, locations, and hosts for meetings of the Tomato Breeders Roundtable.

¹ First meeting where the nameTomato Breeders Round Table was used

^* Meeting held in conjunction with Tomato Quality Workgroup

^** Meeting held in conjunction with the Tomato Disease Workshop

Figure 1. The La Salle Hotel circa 1927, a major venue of the

Tomato Breeders Round Table in the 1960s. It was demolished

in 1976, for more information see

http://chicago.urban-history.org/sites/hotels/lasalle.htm .