📌 Quick Summary (TL;DR): Zailiyskiy Alatau Red
- 🌍 Origin: Bred by the famous tomato breeder Vitaliy Alifirov from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Named after the local Trans-Ili Alatau mountain range.
- 🌿 Plant Habit: Indeterminate. A powerful, heat-tolerant plant that doesn’t drop blossoms during extreme summer heat. Known for being an absolute heavy yielder.
- 🍅 Fruit Characteristics: Large, meaty oxhearts weighing 7-12 oz (200-350 g). The flesh is dense with a great shelf life.
- 👅 Flavor: Very sweet, juicy, and meaty with bright pink interior flesh.
- 💡 Standout feature: This original red version is genetically unstable (segregating). Growing seeds from the red fruit frequently yields surprise plants that produce orange, pure yellow, or even stunning bicolor tomatoes!
Zailiyskiy Alatau Red. Bred by Vitaliy Alifirov (Almaty). A wonderful variety, indet, heavy yielder, and performed beautifully in the Moscow region 👍. Fruits are red, meaty hearts weighing 7-12 oz (200-350 g) with pink flesh, very tasty! 😋 They are quite dense, have great shelf life, and can hang fully ripe on the vine for quite a while without turning to mush or going bad.
The variety isn’t entirely stable yet-it can throw out an orange version which is just as wonderful. In the third photo, the truss on the left is the orange one that grew from red seeds last year. This year, I had another bush grow orange from the red seeds.
Zailiyskiy Alatau Red. I grew this variety in 2020. I received the seeds as a gift from Svetikk. And it turned out to be an absolute masterpiece from Svetik!
My Zailiyskiy Alatau didn’t grow out red or yellow, it was a bicolor. A true bicolor, with mixed orange and red patches inside. However, another plant gave me raspberry-red fruits, just like Svetikk’s. They are large hearts, very sweet, but a bit on the watery side (though this season, a lot of my varieties turned out more watery than usual).
The variety is clearly unstable since it throws out so many different versions. But it is very, very good.
Mine was pure yellow. The shape was similar. And it could also hang on the vine for a long time. I really liked the variety.
Seeds from Svetikk. This year, it became my absolute leader in yield among all my heirloom tomatoes. It didn’t drop blossoms despite the crazy heat, unlike some other varieties that only managed to set their bottom truss. Definitely a permanent spot on my grow list.
And here is my Zailiyskiy Alatau.
And here is my Alatau. I had two bushes growing side by side. They turned out a bit on the smaller side, to be honest. One was red, and the other was a bicolor. I had Zebra Heart Apricot growing right next to it, and the coloring was absolutely identical! I initially thought they somehow cross-pollinated, but it turns out this variety is just genetically unstable.
This variety really made me happy during this hot summer 😊
The name Zailiyskiy Alatau refers to the majestic Trans-Ili Alatau mountain range bordering Almaty, Kazakhstan (the home of breeder Vitaliy Alifirov).
While the name is fascinating, what heirloom collectors will find most exciting about this thread is the discussion on segregation (genetic instability). This original Red version is notorious among Russian seed savers for throwing out unexpected color mutations. As growers noted above, planting seeds saved from a red fruit can result in plants that produce pure yellow, bright orange, or even stunning bicolor tomatoes!
Note: The orange mutation eventually became so popular that it was stabilized and released as its own distinct variety, Zailiyskiy Alatau Orange.
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