Abstract:
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.
