Saladette-type dwarf tomato introgression lines with agronomic potential, improved fruit quality, and biotic stress tolerance

Abstract

Obtaining introgression lines of saladete-type dwarf tomato plants can provide several advantages in breeding programs. In addition to increasing productivity, the dwarf plant can produce metabolites that are important to resistance to biotic stress. However, there are no saladette-type dwarf tomato introgression lines. The objective of this study was to evaluate the agronomic potential, fruit quality, and secondary metabolites associated with pest resistance for the development saladette-type dwarf tomato introgression lines. The experiment was conducted with 23 treatments, including the UFU MC TOM 1 donor parent, the UFU TOM 5 recurrent parent, the Pizzadoro commercial cultivar (control), 5 populations from the first backcross, and 15 populations from the second backcross. Agronomic and nutraceutical characteristics of fruits and the acylsugar content in the leaflets were evaluated. The genetic dissimilarity was calculated using the generalized Mahalanobis distance (D2). Genetic gain through selection was estimated using the rank sum index and the genotype-ideotype distance index. The selection indices showed the importance of obtaining the second backcross. The populations UFU_13_1, UFU_17_1, UFU_10_1, UFUi_11_3, UFUi_10_3, and UFU_11_2 have the potential to obtain introgression lines as they present good agronomic and fruit quality characteristics and acylsugar content similar to UFU MC TOM 1. The dwarf tomato germplasm obtained has significant genetic variability and a saladette-type genetic background with the potential to develop introgression lines. The cultivar UFU MC TOM 1 is promising and can overcome the wild access Solanum pennellii for breeding programs aimed at pest resistance, increasing productivity, and biofortification of fruits to enhance carotenoids.