I bought a hybrid tomato plant from Costco last year and saved seeds. I planted the seeds a few weeks ago and they are growing all right. Will these seeds grow to tomatoes that will produce fruits? Generally speaking , can we save hybrid seeds?
Thank you in advance.
Thank you for contacting the Toronto Master Gardeners. Hybrid tomatoes come from distinct parents that are deliberately bred for certain traits, like fruit colour / size / taste, disease resistance, higher yields and good vigour. Their offspring (first generation which is called F1, presumably the plant you bought) will have the best of all of these desirable traits and tend to grow better and produce higher yields than the parents. However the seeds produced by these first generation plants including yours will usually grow but the resulting fruit will be unpredictable and usually not true to type and less vigorous. These seeds are considered to be genetically unstable.
If you are interested in growing tomatoes from seed, F1 seed (that your original plant grew from) is commercially available but expensive because of the years of breeding (including very careful control of pollination) that went into producing it. These hybrids have their benefits, however you could also consider open-pollinated seed which will grow into plants that are more genetically diverse and can result in more variety in the plants produced, which can allow the plants to slowly adapt over time to local growing conditions and climate.