Genetic Analysis for Fruit Yield and Quality Attributes in Some Processing and Fresh Market Tomato Genotypes

Abstract

ABSTRACTHigher demands for improved fruit yield and processing qualities for Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) could be met through heterosis breeding. It is important to identify the parental line combination performing better for economically important quality traits. The experiment was composed of seven tomato inbred lines (two processing and five fresh market) and 21 F1 hybrids produced by crossing of them in a 7 × 7 half-diallel fashion. The nature and type of gene actions were analyzed to determine how they were involved in inheritance of fruit per plant, yield per plant, average fruit weight, total soluble solids, fruit juice pH, titratable acidity, sugar acid ratio, fruit juice content, shape index, and pericarp thickness. Most characters were predominantly controlled by nonadditive gene actions. Employing hybrid breeding for improving characters could be effective. The crosses ‘Metadel × Marglobe’, ‘Bishola × CLN2037E’, ‘Roma VF × ARP Tomato d2’, ‘Roma VF × CLN2037E’, ‘ARP Tomato d2 × Marglobe’, and ‘Eshete × CLN2037E’ showed positive and highly significant specific combining ability (SCA) effects for number of fruit per plant and fruit yield per plant. This indicated that the crosses could be used for developing high-yielding varieties. The crosses ‘Metadel × Roma VF’, ‘Bishola × Roma VF’, ‘Roma VF × Eshete’, and ‘ARP Tomato d2 × Marglobe’ exhibited positive, significant SCA effects for total soluble solids and negative, significant SCA effects for fruit juice pH. These crosses could be utilized as hybrids with better processing qualities. The crosses ‘Metadel × Marglobe’, ‘Bishola × Eshete’, ‘ARP Tomato d2 × CLN2037E’, and ‘Eshete × Marglobe’ exhibited positive, highly significant SCA effects for sugar-to-acid ratio, indicating that they could be used in hybridization for developing lines with better fruit flavor.