Combining Ability Analysis for Growth, Yield and Quality Traits in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L.)

An experiment was carried out to study the combining ability effects for growh, yield and its attributing traits in tomato in a 9×9 diallel mating fashion excluding reciprocals to generate 36 hybrids by using 9 lycopene rich genotypes viz., 55P2, Kashi Hemanth, EC321425, 16P2, Arka Meghali, EC-528388, COHM7, 11P4 and COHMUD3. The F1s and parents were grown in a Randomized complete block design with 2 replications. The magnitude of SCA variance is more than GCA variance for all the characters under study. The parent COHMUD3 is good general combiner for plant height at last harvest, number of branches at last harvest and number of fruits per cluster whereas, it was observed that genotype EC321425 was good general combiner for days to flowering, days to fifty per cent flowering, number of fruits per cluster, number of clusters per plant, number of fruits per cluster and number of fruits per plant.