Comparative performance of tomatoes during summer and winter

Abstract

Abstract : The study was conducted to evaluate the performance of 31 heat-tolerant lines, 5 heat sensitive cultivars and 4 wild lines of tomato in respect of yield and yield attributes at IPSA during September, 1992 through June, 1993. Heat tolerant and heat sensitive genotypes required 57-68 days to flower in winter. The ten selected genotypes grown in summer flowered in 60 to 71 days for maturity in winter, and 103 to 122 days during summer. In general, plants grown in summer tended to mature earlier than those grown in early winter. The yield per plant varied from 1080.20 g to 6841.51 g in winter while it was only 66.26 g to 798.53 g in summer. The genotypes LE025 (6841.51 g) and LE019 (798.53 g) had the highest yield per plant in winter and summer respectively. In winter the yield performance (62.97 t/ha) was 6-fold higher than in summer. LE025 yield the highest (114.03 t/ha) in early winter and in summer LEO 19 (26.62 t/ha) out yielded than other genotypes. Fruit weight and number of fruits per plant were also higher in early winter than in summer.