Traits association analysis for yield and quality attributes of tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum L.)

The present investigation was conducted during Rabi, 2018-19 at vegetable research farm, RPCAU, Pusa, Samastipur, Bihar, India. The 30 tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) genotypes were evaluated to estimate the nature and magnitude of associations of different characters with yield per plant and among themselves. The experiment was conducted using Randomized Block Design (RBD). Yield per plant exhibited significant and positive association with average fruit weight (0.7410), polar diameter of fruit (0.5288) and equilateral diameter of fruit (0.6602) indicating the possibility of simultaneous improvement of these traits in improving total fruit yield per plant. In case of path analysis plant height at maturity (0.1247), number of days to 50 percent fruit initiation (0.2136), number of fruit per cluster (0.4878), average fruit weight (0.6832), polar diameter of fruit (0.1379), equilateral diameter of fruit (0.6602) and total soluble solid (0.1153) had high positive direct effect on yield per plant hence, indicating their true positive and significant association with yield per plant. This indicated that these traits play important role in yield improvement. This implies that direct selection for these characters might be effective and there is a possibility of improvement in yield per plant.