2024, Vol. 7, Issue 11, Part F

The fruit set in tomato gets affected by several factors such as climatic conditions (temperature, humidity, light etc.), nutrient availability, soil moisture and genotypes but it also depend on the pollination which further depend on pollen viability and pollen germination. In light of this, the present investigation was carries out to evaluate the effect of pollen viability on fruit set per cent in 122 genotypes (15 parents, 105 hybrids generated through half diallel mating design and 2 standard checks) of tomato in polyhouse at SKUAST-K, Srinagar. The perusal of the findings revealed no direct correlation between the pollen viability and fruit set per cent however, most of the genotypes exhibited higher fruit set per cent along with high pollen viability per cent. Further, the findings revealed that the pollen viability and fruits set exhibited significant variation among the parents and hybrids. Among the parents, the highest pollen viability was recorded in parent S-22 (92.65) followed by IARI-4 (91.38) and VRT-01 (90.84) while, the maximum fruit set was recorded in parent Superbug (90.91) followed by Black Plum (81.37) and VRT-01 (80.09). Among the hybrids, number of hybrids exhibited higher pollen viability and fruit set than both the standard checks. However, the highest pollen viability was recorded in hybrid Roma x Superbug (97.83) followed by Mortgage Lifter x Glacier (97.50), CLN-1821 x VRT-01 (94.21), Stupice x Mortgage Lifter (94.12) and H-88-78-1 x Stupice (93.58) while, the maximum fruit set was recorded in hybrid IARI-4 x Stupice (100) followed by IARI-4 x TOLCV-28 (97.40), Shalimar-2 x Stupice (91.83), Sub-Arctic Plenty x Glacier (89.00) and Shalimar-1 x H-88-78-1 (87.89). The study further suggests that the fruit set per cent not directly depends on the pollen viability per cent but it also varies genotype to genotype and growing conditions.