Combining ability of tomato lines in saladette-type hybrids

Due to the growing importance of the saladette fresh tomato market in Brazil, our objective in this paper was to assess the combining abilities of lines potentially useful as parents in hybrids of this type. The experiment comprised 28 genotypes, 18 hybrids from a partial diallel cross obtained from crossing two groups of tomato lines: Group I (9 parents) and Group II (2 parents), 8 F1 experimental hybrids, and 2 commercial checks. Traits evaluated were total yield, mean fruit weight, fruit firmness, shape and percent of soluble solids. Additive genetic effects were generally more important than non-additive effects for all traits under evaluation. The TOM-542 and TOM-734 lines, from group I, and the TOM-720 line, from group II, presented high general combining ability (CGC) estimates for most of the traits of importance for saladette tomatoes, and were therefore considered suitable parents for hybrids of this type. Greater fruit firmness of the TOM-723 line compared to the TOM-720 line (Group II), as parental lines, was mainly attributed to the presence of the nor(A) allele in the former, which controls greater fruit shelf life. The F1 hybrids (TOM-542 x TOM-720), (TOM-580 x TOM-720), (TOM-734 x TOM-720), and (TOM-727 x TOM-720) showed good performance and fruit quality and thus constitute possible commercial varieties.