Evaluation and Genetic Studies in Tomato Genotypes

The present investigation was conducted with fourteen genotypes of tomato to find out the variability, correlation and path coefficient effects to identifying the desirable combiners. The accessions revealed wide variability for all characters evaluated. Phenotypic variances were higher than their respective genotypic variances thus revealing the role of environmental factors. High estimates of heritability, genetic advance and genotypic coefficient of variation for the traits of average fruit weight, number of fruits/plant and number of branches were controlled by additive gene action indicating the possibility of selection to improve these characters. Correlation and path co-effiecnt analysis revealed that number of fruits per plant not only had positively significant association with fruit yield per plant but also have positively high direct effect on fruit yield per plant regarded as the main determinants of fruit yield per plant.