Genetic studies in Cherry Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme Mill.)

Abstract:

The experiment was conducted at the experimental field of Division of Vegetable Science, SKUAST-Kashmir, Shalimar for eight months during kharif 2019 with fifteen different cherry tomato (Solanum lycopersicum var. cerasiforme Mill.) genotypes collected from various agro-climatic regions of India. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among genotypes for all the traits indicating genetic variability in the genotypes under study. A high genotypic coefficient of variation was shown by all the traits except days to first flowering, days to first fruit harvest and harvest duration indicating the higher magnitude of variability for these traits that can be utilized in future breeding programmes. The heritability in the broad sense was high above 60 per cent for all the traits except pericarp thickness. The genetic advance was found to be low in almost all traits except the number of fruits plant-1 (88.04 %), plant height (81.60%), number of seeds fruit-1 (43.62%) and harvest duration (24.37%). High heritability along with high genetic advance was shown by plant height, number of fruits plant-1, harvest duration, number of seeds fruit-1, vitamin-C and color, indicating that these traits were mainly controlled by additive gene effect and thus selection may be effective. Correlation coefficient analysis showed that yield per plant had significant positive correlations with plant height, number of flower clusters plant-1, number of fruits cluster-1, number of fruits plant-1, average fruit length, average fruit width, average fruit weight, pericarp thickness, harvest duration, number of seeds per fruit, average seed weight per fruit, and average seed yield plant-1 thereby indicating that the selection for these traits would automatically bring about improvement in yield.