Characterization, Diversity Analysis and Stability Testing of Extant Tomato Cultivars for Pheno-morphological Traits

Abstract

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.), is cultivated globally. Its cultivation faces several problems such as shrinking genetic diversity, morphological variability and stability. Therefore, a study was conducted to characterize, classify, assess the diversity and test stability in 100 extant cultivars of tomato for 35 pheno-morphological traits. Data were recorded on the basis of distinctiveness, uniformity and stability test guidelines of tomato. All the cultivars exhibited distinct and uniform characters. The 100 cultivars of tomato were grouped into fi ve major clusters based on their characteristics in the coeffi cient range of 0.48-1.00. In the stability test analysis, interaction of cultivars and environment was signifi cant for various morphological characteristics. These traits were stability in most of the cultivars across different environments. The characterized pheno-morphological traits in study would be helpful for creating a database on tomato.