Influence of female to male flower crossing ratios on hybrid seed yield and quality in tomato (Solanum lycopersi-cum) cv. ArkaAbhijit.

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the effect of female and male flower crossing ratios on fruitset (%), seed set, seed yield per fruit and seed quality in tomato cv. Arka Abhijit at Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengalury. The results indicated that there were no significant effects of female to male flower crossing ratios namely, 3:1, 4:1 and 5:1 on seed yield attributes namely, fruitset (%), number of seeds per fruit, seed weight per fruit and 100-seed weight except for higher mean percent fruitset in 4:1 ratio (66) and higher number of seeds per fruit ( 197.4 ) in 3:1 ratio in the year 2005. However, the female to male crossing ratio of 5:1 resulted in significant increase in hybrid seed quality for the characters seed germination (65.50 % and 74.81%) and seedling vigour index (based on I and II count) of 1 483 and 1689 respectively in tomato. Hence, in hybrid seed production of Arka Abhijit, pollen scarcity and quantity was not found to be a limiting factor and could accommodate crossing up to 5:1 (female to male flower ratio) which pertains to a pollen load of approximately 1866 pollen grains on stigma without compromising on seed yield and quality.