COMBINING ABILITY ANALYSIS IN DIALLEL CROSSESِ OF TOMATO ( Lycopersicon Spp.)

Abstract

An experiment was conducted by using four tomato genotypes vs. (1)the wild species (L.pimpinellifolium) and three varieties of cultivated tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) namely (2) Pearson (3) Early Parson (4) mahaly (karmless).The objectives of this experiment was to enter the wild specie(L.pimpinellifolium) in programme of full diallel crosses and to estimate of several genetic parameters. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among genotypes ,parents and hybrids for all the characters of General combining ability mean square was significant for plant height, No. of branches/plant, No. of total leaves/ plant, average leaf area, No. of leaf lets, flowering earliness, No. of flowers/in florescence, No. of in florescence/ plant, early picking, No. fruits/ plant, mean fruits weight, mean total yield/ plant, average fruit diameter, No. of locules / fruit and vitamin C content, while the specific combining ability mean squares were significant for plant height , early picking, mean fruits weight, mean total yield/ plant, average fruit diameter and No.of locules/fruit.The results showed that wild tomato species (L.pimpinellifolium) was the best combiner for the favorable characters while specific combining ability results for each hybrids indicated that the hybrid(Early Parson X L.pimpinellifolium) have a good S. C. A. for the most favorable characters.