AGRONOMIC WEALTH IN MEXICAN COLLECTIONS OF NATIVE TOMATOES (Solanum lycopersicon L.)

Abstract

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L.) production at the national level uses three cultivars, “Saladette”, “Bola” and “Cherry”, which predominate in the market. The use of native tomatoes is for regional markets, but they have the potential to be used as a source of genes for breeding. The yield potential and fruit quality of 100 native tomato populations were evaluated with the variables: plant height, normalized difference vegetation index, total number of fruits and yield, length and width of fruit, thickness of the pericarp, number of loculi, total soluble solids, luminosity, chrome and °Hue. The results showed that the G3 population presented the highest yield with 10.85 kg m^-2, with 121 fruits of 74.3 g in the average of pumpkin fruit shape with number of loculi of 8.7. The variables number of fruits and yield per plant did not have a normal distribution compared to the others. The results evidenced that the native tomato populations cultivated under open field conditions have a broad morphological variety in plant and fruit forms and sizes.