Characterization of induced mutants and their hybrids of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) for growth, yield and fruit quality traits to explore the feasibility in future breeding

Characterization of tomato mutants affecting growth, yield and fruit quality traits could provide valuable insights into the underlying biology vis-à-vis source of new alleles for breeding programs. Knowing the presence of useful genes and alleles would help in making decisions on the multiplication of accessions and the maintenance of seed stocks when responding to an expected higher demand for materials. Such information may also help in making decisions on heterogeneous accessions, where only some genotypes may possess useful alleles. Thus, the present study was undertaken to characterize three induced mutants, two parental lines and three hybrids for 9 qualitative and 27 quantitative traits to utilize useful genes in tomato breeding, and to assess genetic variability and character associationship among 27 quantitative characters to identify important selection indices. The variation was observed in the habit of growth, type of blossoms, fruit form and the color of the immature fruit among mutants. A significant effect of mutant genes is recorded in a heterogeneous state to express desirable horticultural qualities in hybrids. Partial effects to excessive dominance have been found to inherit fruit yields and other horticultural qualities. Exploit the hybrid Berika × B Mut-1 appeared as the most promising and could either commercially use for both table and processing purpose after critical evaluation or could be utilized in segregating generation to identify pure lines with desirable horticultural traits. The most important traits for high heritability with high genetic advance are: flower cluster per plant, flower per cluster, fruit per plant, number of locules per fruit, total chlorophyll content of leaf, total chlorophyll content of immature fruits, chlorophyll a content of immature fruits, chlorophyll b content of immature fruits, lycopene content of mature fruits and ascorbic acid content, suggesting selection would be rewarding for improvement of these traits. The top priority should be given to selection based on lycopene content, chlorophyll a content of leaf, ascorbic acid content, fruit number per plant and chlorophyll b content of immature fruit for yield improvement and could be considered while formulating selection indices in the improvement of tomato.