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Cherry tomato (Solanum lycopersicon var cerasiforme) is small size fruits, with a bright red colour resembling to cherry and becoming popular in the retail chains which are marketed at a premium price. The field experiment was conducted to study the effect of different (35, 50 and 75 per cent) shading intensities on growth and yield (qha , respectively). Among the different shading intensities and genotypes, maximum plant height was observed in 75 per cent shading intensity and genotype KSP -113 at 30 days interval (74.70 and 60.95 cm, respectively). The minimum days to 50% flowering of cherry tomato were observed in cherry tomatoes grown under 35 per cent shading intensity (45.00 days) as compared to other shading intensities while minimum days to 50% flowering were observed in genotype KSP-113 (44.00 days). The maximum length of the cluster (9.58 cm), the weight of cluster (27.67 g), number of fruits per cluster (9.42) and number of pickings (11.67) were observed in 35 per cent shading intensities and in genotype KSP-113. The cultivation of KSP-113 genotype under 35 per cent shading intensity was found to be most sustainable for improving growth and yield of cherry tomato during the summer season.

In the present investigation, thirty gladiolus (Gladiolus hybridus Hort) genotypes were assessed to know the nature and magnitude of genetic divergence using Mahalanobis D2 statistics. Genetic diversity study indicated that among the 17 characters, most of the flower characters contributed towards diversity. Floret diameter contributed maximum towards genetic divergence followed by number of florets per spike, vase life, spike length and plant height.Thirty genotypes were grouped into 8 clusters and among them, cluster I was the largest with 9 genotypes followed by cluster II having 7 genotypes, and IV cluster 6 and cluster III with 3 genotypes each. Clusters were of V, VII and VIII solitary type means they having only one genotype in their group. Divergence values (D2 value) ranged from zero to 7.97 indicating considerable amount of moderate variability in the material studied. Information generated from the present study would be useful in selection of parents for future breeding programme for flower quality improvement in gladiolus. It is desirable to select genotypes from clusters having high cluster means and also with high flower character like spike length as parents for future recombination breeding programmes.

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