STUDY ON GENETIC PARAMETERS IN SELECTED PARENTS AND THEIR HYBRIDS OF TOMATO (SOLANUM LYCOPERSICUM L.)

A total of 12 diverse tomato genotypes as parents and their 32 hybrids, obtained through Line × tester mating fashion, were evaluated to observe the consequence of different genetic parameters on yield contributing traits. The experiment was conducted during two consecutive years of the 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 winter seasons in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with three replications. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed highly significant differences for all the characters, suggesting the presence of genetic variation among the parents. In parents, the highest GCV and PCV were observed 48.94 and 49.10 for fruits plant-1, 39.40 and 39.77 for yield plant-1, and 29.32 and 29.49 for fruits cluster-1, respectively. In hybrids, the higher level of GCV was observed for yield plant-1 (35.62), fruits plant-1 (25.83), individual fruit weight (24.73), cluster plant-1 (21.79), and of PCV for yield plant-1 (35.86), fruits plant-1 (25.83), individual fruit weight (24.93), and cluster plant-1 (21.79). The heritability ranged between 83.92-100% in parents and 99.38-100% in hybrids for most of the traits which denotes a higher level of heritability. The GA as % of mean was higher (>10%) for most of the characters except for days to maturity in parents (9.91) and in hybrids (10.19). According to the per se performance, the promising parents were G10, G4, G9, G8, G7, G6, G14, G1, and hybrids were G7×G14, G8×G14, G10×G6, G10×G12, and G9×G1 based on their yield plant-1 which could be used as elite varieties of tomato.