The effort to evaluation tomato germplasm for resistance to geminiviruses in Guatemala started in 1998, when hybrids or lines with resistance to Tomato yellow leaf curl virus were obtained by Luis Mejia from several colleagues around the world. Luis Mejia along with Rudi Teni, Favi Vidavski, and Douglas Maxwell made the selections for resistant lines from these initial lines. In about 2000, lines from this breeding program at San Carlos Univeristy were crossed with a commercial hybrids by Rudi Teni and selected twice per year for resistance, fruit shape, and fruit size. XA271 (F1) is a result of this 7 year effort.

Happy Fellows: Left to Right, Hanokh Czosnek, Luis Mejia and Douglas Maxwell.

Learn more about XA271.