Performance evaluation of tomato cultivars at high altitude.

摘要

An experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of 11 tomato cultivars (Local round, Red blast, Mode red, Nagina, Gala, Peto-mech-II, Nemadina, Shalkot, Roma, Liger-87 and Rio Grande) in the northern areas of Pakistan in 2003. The days to first picking, plant height, number of branches per plant, number and weight of fruits per plant, harvesting period, fresh and dry fruit yields showed significant differences among the various cultivars. The maximum days to first picking (96.40) were recorded in Local round followed by Shalkot (95.25 days) while Rio grande had the earliest fruit maturity (82.40 days). Local round also showed the maximum plant height (110.50 cm), number of branches per plant (10.77) and fruits per plant (98.30), followed by Shalkot, Nagina and Peto-mech-II, with 58.47, 51.33 and 46.15 fruits per plant, respectively. The lowest number of fruits per plant (29.47) was found in Nemadina. Shalkot attained the maximum fruit weight per plant (3.03 kg), fresh fruit yield (68.36 t ha-1) and dry fruit yield (4.49 t ha-1) while Local round had the lowest fruit weight per plant (0.83 kg), fresh fruit yield (20.30 t ha-1) and dry fruit yield (1.01 t ha-1). Peto-mech-II and Rio grande stood second and third in terms of fresh and dry fruit yield, respectively. The longest harvesting period was recorded in Local round (137.67 days), while Gala had the shortest harvesting period (107.23 days). Shalkot, Peto-mech-II, Rio grande, Red blast and Roma were promising with stable performance for yield and other characters. However, the potential of these cultivars is needed to be further tested under the climatic conditions of the northern areas of Pakistan to elicit substantial conclusions.