Tomatoes are a widely grown crop around the world. However, the development of new tomato varieties faces challenges due to harsh environmental conditions, limited genetic variety, and low seed setting rates.
A recent study aimed to address these challenges by evaluating 21 tomato genotypes in two different locations in Pakistan. The researchers focused on a range of traits, including vine length, days to 50% flowering, and the number of clusters and flowers per plant. Yield-related traits, such as fruit setting percentage, number of marketable fruits, fruit weight, and fruit width, were also assessed. Quality traits like fruit firmness, total soluble solids, and pericarp thickness were examined as well.
The findings showed significant differences in all these traits across the genotypes. These differences were statistically notable, with broad-sense heritability ranging from 84.59% to 99.88%, indicating a high potential for genetic improvement.
The study also revealed strong correlations between various factors, such as marketable fruit yield, number of fruits per cluster, and number of clusters per plant. Principal component analysis (PCA) further validated these findings, suggesting that NCP, NFC, NMFP, NFPC, and MFYP could be effective selection criteria for improving tomato quality.
In conclusion, the study identified five promising genotypes—V4, V5, V10, V14, and V15—that could play a key role in future tomato breeding programs aimed at improving growth and yield under thermal stress conditions.
