Author(s):

Banaz Alam and Amitava Paul

Abstract: Path analysis was performed on plant and fruit characters of twenty nine tomato genotypes grown in a two years field experiments to determine for fruit yield, the direct and indirect effects of the various yield attributing traits: days to first flowering, days to 50% flowering, number of flower cluster plant^-1, primary branches plant^-1, secondary branches plant^-1, plant height (cm), number of fruits plant^-1 and average fruit weight (g). Fruit yield plant^-1 was positively and significantly correlated with primary branches plant^-1 (0.40, 0.39), number of fruits plant^-1 (0.47, 0.37) and average fruit weight (0.59, 0.49) at both genotypic and phenotypic levels, respectively. Path analysis showed that secondary branches plant^-1 had the highest positive direct effect (0.89) on fruit yield plant^-1 followed by average fruit weight (0.87), number of fruits plant^-1 (0.65), days to 50% flowering (0.19) and number of flower cluster plant^-1 (0.05), while other traits like days to first flowering, primary branches plant^-1 and plant height had negative direct effects. The significant positive correlation coefficients of number of fruits plant^-1 and average fruit weight with fruit yield plant^-1 were resulted mainly from high and positive direct effects of these traits with fruit yield suggesting direct selection would be rewarding whereas for the characters days to 50% flowering and number of flower cluster plant^-1 for which correlation coefficients were negative but the direct effect was positive, a restricted simultaneous selection model is to be followed. For the character like plant height, the indirect causal factors eg. secondary branches plant^-1 and number of fruits plant^-1 are to be considered simultaneously for selection, since indirect effects seem to be the cause of correlation.

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