Characterization of Exotic Tomato Germplasm from ICAR-NBPGR Gene Bank

Abstract

The present study describes the characterization of 148 exotic tomato accessions from ICAR-NBPGR, New Delhi gene bank. The degree of variance for morphological features was high. Mean plant height of 72.36 cm, number of primary branches 2.7, days to 50% flowering 74.9, number of flower clusters per plant 5.91, number of flowers per cluster 3.91, number of locules per fruit 3.08, fruit weight 62.06 g, pericarp thickness 4.32 mm, fruit length 45.98 mm, fruit width 45.9 mm, total soluble solids 4.81° Brix and yield per plant 0.28 Kg were recorded. The first eight PCA extracted accounted for 89.23% of the total variation based on 12 phenotypic characters. A significant positive association was observed among the fruit characters. High PCV, GCV, heritability and GAM were recorded for most of the characters studied. The high variability especially for economically important fruit characters among the tomato germplasm like EC716696, EC715399, EC705451, EC705439, EC699717, EC695044, EC695038, EC695037, EC759285, EC759989 and EC759255 recorded higher TSS values and, germplasm like EC753226, EC716696, EC753220 and EC759989 recorded higher fruit yield per plant, makes this germplasm a potential resource for future tomato breeding programmes.