Estimation of gene action involved in inheritance of yield and yield attributing traits in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

The present investigation entitled “Estimation of gene action involved in inheritance of yield and yield attributing traits in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)” was conducted during Rabi seasons of 2017-18 (E1) and 2018-19 (E2) to study the, nature and magnitude of gene action using diallel mating design at the Main Experiment Station (MES) of the Department of Vegetable Science, Narendra Deva University of Agriculture \u0026 Technology, Narendra Nagar, Kumarganj, Ayodhya (U.P.) India. Ten diverse parents of tomato were crossed in a diallel fashion (excluding reciprocals) for generating experimental material. All the ten parents and their 45 hybrids were grown in Randomized Block design with three replications. Observations were recorded on the 16 characters viz., Days to 50 per cent flowering, Days to first fruit harvest, Plant height (cm), Number of primary branches per plant, Number of fruits per cluster, Number of fruits per plant, Average fruit weight (g), Pericarp thickness (mm), Number of locules per fruit, Fruit length (cm), Fruit diameter (cm), Marketable fruit yield per plant (kg), Total fruit yield per plant (kg), Total soluble solids (%), Titrable acidity (%), Ascorbic acid content (mg/100 g fresh fruit). The data were analyzed to fulfil the following objectives to estimate gene action for yield and its component traits Analysis of variance revealed significant differences for the parents, FI’s and parents vs. FI’s for all the characters indicating wide variation except fruit circumference in both years and fruit length in Y1. Both additive and dominance variance were found important in the inheritance of most of the traits, whereas dominance variance were more prominent than the additive variance. Mean degree of dominance showed over dominance for the most of the traits.