Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2019) 8(7): 1011-1020 1011 Original Research Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2019.807.121 Heterosis Studies for Fruit Yield and its Components in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) N.C. Ghadage * , G.U. Kulkarni, H.R. Meta and Raju Shyadambi Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, Junagadh Agricultural University, Junagadh- 362001 Gujarat (India) *Corresponding author ABSTRACT Introduction Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is one of the most important world’s largest vegetable crop ranks third after potato and onion. It is originated in Peru of South America region (Soni and Soni, 2010).Tomato is mainly grown as rabi crop in the plains of India including tropical, sub-tropical and temperate regions. However, in the hilly region it can also be grown as a summer and rainy season crop. It is a typical day neutral plant and self- pollinated crop but up to 5% cross pollination also occurs through insects such as bees (Singh et al., 2004). It is a warm season crop reasonably resistant to heat, drought and grows under wide range of soil and climatic conditions. Optimum temperature for tomato cultivation is 20-24˚C.The annual worldwide production of tomatoes has been estimated at 177.8 million tonnes from total production area of about 4.7 Mha with a productivity of 37.01 tonnes/ha (FAO, 2016). India ranks 2 nd in the world with the total area of 0.80 Mha with production and productivity of 19759.92 tonnes and 25 tonnes/ha, respectively (Indian Horticulture Database, 2018). International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 8 Number 07 (2019) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com The experiment was carried out at Vegetable Research Station, Junagadh Agricultural University, Junagadh, Gujarat during rabi season of 2017-19 to study performance of nine lines and four testers into thirty-six tomato hybrids for fruit yield and its component traits by Line x Tester analysis. The analysis of variance for seventeen characters showed significant differences for all the genotypes indicating that experimental material had sufficient genetic variability for all the characters studied. Among 36 hybrids, 9 and 12 hybrids manifested significant desirable heterobeltiosis and standard heterosis for fruit yield per plant. The heterobeltiosis for fruit yield ranged from -70.26 to 206.04 % while standard heterosis ranged from -66.32 to 189.32 %. The cross JTL-15-02 × Punjab Chhuhara exhibited the highest desirable heterosis over better parent followed by JTL-15- 05 × DVRT-2. These hybrids exhibited desirable heterosis for important yield attributes suggesting that the heterosis for marketable yield was associated with heterosis for component characters. Keywords Heterobeltiosis, Standard heterosis, Component traits and tomato Accepted: 10 June 2019 Available Online: 10 July 2019 Article Info