Development of high yielding and uniform Tomato fruits using pure line selection

Abstract

Tomato is one of the Ghana’s most important vegetable crop both in terms of production and consumption. Demand for the crop year-round owes to the versatility of its usage in both fresh and processed food preparations. The supply of tomato on the market is however, irregular because of the seasonality of production. Varieties grown in Ghana are mostly hybrid. Farmers sometimes select and re-select from segregating populations till they arrive at a relatively stable cultivar. Farmers in the transitional agro-ecological zone of Ghana have through the above process, identified a material they named œpetofake (an opened pollinated tomato) with very good attributes. Despite the good attributes exhibited, it still segregates probably because of poor handling and or it is not stabilized properly. Using pure line selection, 3, 080 seedlings were planted in 2011 for observation and selections. Based on their fruit shape, size, colour, surface and yield, 101 plants were selected. These were again planted in 2012 and of the 101 planted seedlings, eventually created 12 individual lines. In 2013, the 12 lines were further evaluated at the research station. Planting involved growing each progeny into single rows of about 12 plants in Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The results showed significant differences (P<0.005) were observed in the number of days to 100% flowering with no varied differences in the number of days to first flowering and 50% flowering. The treatments however, showed significant differences (P<0.005) in plant height with P082 and P000 given the tallest and shortest heights respectively. Treatment P082 produced the highest number of marketable fruits and was notably different from treatments P000, P077, P035, P068 and P085 respectively. The highest average fruit weight was obtained on P011. This was however, not varied from the other treatments except P020 and P035. Likewise, P082 gave the highest total marketable weight yet not significantly different (P<0.005) from all other treatments except P000, P002 and P068. This study has revealed that P000 which was used as a ˜control, showed rather poor output compared to those of all other treatments in terms of number of marketable fruits, average fruit weight and total marketable fruit weight. Treatments P082, P005, P011 and P057 were however, showed better results as regards to plant height, number of marketable fruits, average fruit weight and total marketable fruit weights.