The physicochemical characteristics of tomato fruits from three commercial cultivars available in the local market were compared with a Wild cultivar. The results showed that the Ibadan‐Local and Wild cultivars had a higher fruit yield than Ife‐1 and Roma‐VF cultivars. The Wild cultivar has a high skin and seed content. The shape of the fruits varied from spherical to pear‐like. Physicochemical properties such as specific gravity, pH, titratable acidity, ash and refractive index did not vary significantly while total solids, longitudinal (stem→blossom end) and cross‐sectional diameters (transverse diameter), vitamin C and reducing sugars were significantly different (P > 0.05) among the cultivars investigated. The results showed that the Wild cultivar has attributes (i.e., physicochemical characteristics) comparable to commercial cultivars to recommend it to breeders for cultivation.

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Pollen grains from fresh anthers of three species and a variety of Ocimum occurring in Southwestern Nigeria were collected and acetolysed. This was in an attempt to use the pollen characteristics to delimit, classify and trace probable evolutionary relationships among the taxa. The structural morphology of the pollen grains carried out with a light microscope is reported. Characters measured on the pollen grains were pollen diameter, pollen wall thickness, depth of colpi, distance between colpi and pore diameter. This was done with the aid of an ocular micrometer. Number of pores per pollen was counted. Pollen grain sizes of the species and the variety of Ocimum studied fall into two groups, Media (diameter 25-50µm) and Magna (diameter 50-100µm). All the species and the variety had acolpate and hexacolpate pollen grains. Heptacolpate and octacolpate pollen grains which are advanced types of pollen grains were encountered in O. canum only. These advanced types of pollen grains are a mark of recent evolutionary development in the species.

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