Impact of Reciprocal Cross and Heterosis Phenomenon on Various Tomato Traits

Abstract

Reciprocal hybrids are achieved by crossing parental genotypes in both directions, while heterosis happens when the F1s surpass their parental lines for a characteristic. Two different tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum L.) cultivars were crossed reciprocally to study the impact of the reciprocal cross and heterosis phenomenon on numerous tomato characteristics. Fifty-two different traits were measured, including flower, fruit, leaf, shoot, roots, yield and yield components, and physiochemical traits. The results showed that various traits were significantly influenced by reciprocal crosses, such as plant mass, petal length, cone length, pistil length, fruit width, fruit length, single fruit weight, fruit flesh weight, seed and placenta weight, number of fruits locules, fruit calyx weight, number of days to flower, total sugar, ascorbic acid, anthocyanin, and total phenolic content. In addition, the results showed that several traits showed positive high parent heterosis, which are the sepal length, pistil length, flower fresh weight, flower dry weight, flower moisture content, number of clusters per plant, number of flowers per plant, number of flowers per cluster, number of fruits per cluster, fruits number per plant, total fruits weight per plant, leaf length, leaf fresh weight, leaf dry weight, number of branches per plant, plant height, plant mass, ascorbic acid, total carotene, and anthocyanin. These results will be significantly helpful for the future breeding program, especially for breeding for yield and yield components that showed strong heterosis for most of the traits.