Author(s):

SS Solankey, Shirin Akhtar, Pallavi Neha, Meenakshi Kumari and Radheshyam Kherwa

Abstract: Tomato (<em>Solanum lycopersicum </em>L.) is one of the most important fruit vegetable crop in most regions of the world. Though, tomato is basically warm season crop, it often experiences high temperature stress during fruit<strong>-</strong>set when grown beyond its optimal temperature range of 21<strong>-</strong>24°C. Moderately elevated temperature stress (28<strong>-</strong>29°C) may not disrupt biochemical reactions fundamental for normal cell functioning since the temperature are still in the range that a tomato plant would grow normally. Lack of tolerance to high temperature in most tomato cultivars presents a major limitation for tomato growers. Increase in optimal temperature up to 2 to 4°C adversely affects gamete development and inhibits ability of pollinated flowers to develop into seeded fruits, resulting in reduced yield. High temperature stress adversely affects the vegetative as well as reproductive stages of tomato and ultimately reduces yield and quality of the fruits. In this respect a total of 200 cultivated and wild tomato genotypes were collected from various institutes and screened out during the summer season under open field condition for their heat tolerance. The findings indicate that under heat stress Selection<strong>-</strong>18 is the most promising genotypes for fruit yield followed by Cheku Grande, EC<strong>-</strong>620444, CLN<strong>-</strong>1621<strong>-</strong>L and EC<strong>-</strong>620519. Moreover, the wild species <em>Solanum peruvianum </em>performed best for number of fruits per plant followed by EC<strong>-</strong>528372, EC<strong>-</strong>538455, <em>S. pimpinellifolium, </em>Rio Grande and CLN<strong>-</strong>1621<strong>-</strong>L.The genotype IIHR<strong>-</strong>2754 contains highest TSS (6.73%) followed by EC<strong>-</strong>109764, Arka Samrat, Selection<strong>-</strong>18 and EC<strong>-</strong>529080. The correlation studies indicate that days to first flowering, days to 50% flowering, days to first fruit set, fruit setting (%) and number of fruits per plant were found as the major yield contributing characters under heat stress. These better performing genotypes can be a better donor for future hybrid breeding programme of tomato for heat tolerance.

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