Genetic Variability in Nutritional Quality, Yield and Yield Attributes of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

The experiment was conducted to evaluate variability estimates for yield contributing and nutritional traits in 60 tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) hybrids and their parents. The trial was laid out in alpha lattice design and data pertaining to 13 quantitative, six nutritional and four qualitative characters have been presented. The estimates of mean, range, phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) and genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) revealed significant phenotypic and nutritional variations among the genotypes for most of the characters under study. The principal component analysis showed that number of marketable fruits, number of non-marketable fruits, marketable yield, total yield, total number of fruits, number of fruits per cluster, fruit length and width, beta carotene, vitamin C, lycopene and acidity content contributed most to observed variations in the population. Five clusters were identified among the tomato population and they significantly associated with high nutritional content, high yield, yield contributing traits and fruit size related traits. For association among traits, moderate to very strong significant (P < 0.05) positive correlation was recorded for yield with number of branches (0.40), number of marketable fruit (0.84), number of non-marketable fruits (0.71), marketable yield (.98) and non-marketable yield (0.71). On the contrary, brix recorded weak negative significant correlation (-0.32) with non-marketable yield-while no significant association was observed between the agronomic and nutritional variables. Estimates of moderate to high heritability in the broad sense coupled with high genetic advance as a percentage of mean showed the feasibility of improving fruit nutritional quality, yield and yield contributing traits in this population through selection.