Genetics of yield and yield contributing traits in tomato under low temperature grown climatic regime

The generation mean analysis studied in six generations of tomato involving four parents, viz., Pusa Sheetal, Pusa Sadabahar, Booster and Pusa Rohini showed importance of dominance x dominance followed by additive gene effect, additive x dominance and dominance with a small proportion of additive x additive gene effect. Breeding methods, i.e., pedigree followed by selection can simultaneously be exploited both for additive and non-additive gene effects. Appreciable heterosis was observed for all the characters studied over their respective better parents. The range of heterosis for yield/plant varied from 16.01 to 29.04 per cent over the respective better parents. Hybrid Pusa Sadabahar x Pusa Rohini was found to be best performing for yield which exhibited superior performance for the characters like number of flowers per truss, number of primary branches per plant, internodal length, fruit diameter, days to first harvest and yield per plant. The next best cross was Pusa Sheetal x Booster as it showed superior performance for characters like days to 50% flowering, number of fruit-set per truss and number of fruits per plant. These hybrids can be commercialized to get an early yield in tomato.