Study on Genetic Variability and Character Inter-Relationship of Quality and Yield Components in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

The present investigation was conducted to elucidate the genetic characters viz. variability, heritability and correlation between yield and yield components of different tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) genotypes. Thirty genotypes including released varieties, land races and germplasms were used in this investigation for assessment of quality, yield and yield components. The experiment was conducted during summer, 2012-13 at field of Department Vegetable Science, KRC College of Horticulture, Arabhavi, Karnataka. The study revealed that high heritability coupled with high genetic advance over per cent mean were noticed for number of clusters per plant, number of branches per plant, number of locules per fruit, average fruit weight, equatorial and polar diameter of fruit, lycopene content and fruit firmness, which might be assigned to additive gene effect, selection for such characters gives more importance in crop improvement of tomato. The phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) were higher with smaller magnitude than genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV), indicating the apparent variation is not only due to genotypic but also due to influence of environmental factors. The character association analysis indicated that fruit yield were significantly and positively correlated with fruit yield per plant (0.81), number of fruits per plant (0.65) and average fruit weight (0.45), whereas, number of fruits per cluster (-0.15), TSS (-0.04), polar diameter (-0.34) and equatorial diameter (-0.30) were negatively correlated with total yield.