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Small-fruited cherry tomato accession PI 270248 [Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. var. cerasiforme (Dunal) A. Gray] with high fruit sugars was crossed to large-fruited inbred line Fla.7833-1-1-1 (7833) (L. esculentum) that had normal (low) fruit sugars. The F1 was crossed to PI 270248 and 7833 to obtain BCP1 and BCP2, respectively, and self-pollinated to obtain F2 seed. The resulting population was used to study the inheritance of high sugars from PI 270248. Continuous sugar level frequency distributions of BCP1, BCP2, and F2 suggest that the trait is under polygenic control. Additive variation was significant, but dominance variation was not. There was a heterozygote × heterozygote type of epistasis present that likely caused the F1 sugar level to skew nearly to the level of the high sugar parent. The F2 mean sugar level was lower than the midparent level. Broad-sense heritability was 0.86. There was a significant line × season (fall, spring) interaction where lines with higher sugars were affected more by seasons than lines with lower sugars. Sugar level, in general, was higher in spring. Higher solar radiation in spring than in fall may explain the sugar level difference between the seasons.
Small-fruited cherry tomato accession PI 270248 (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. var. cerasiforme Dunal) with high fruit sugars was crossed to large-fruited inbred line Fla.7833-1-1-1 (7833) that had normal (low) fruit sugar. Sugars in the F2 were positively correlated with soluble solids, glucose, fructose, pH, and titratable acidity, and inversely correlated with fruit size. Earliness was not significantly correlated with sugars but was negatively correlated with fruit size. Thus, the lack of a sugar-earliness correlation indirectly indicates a trend for early tomato plants to be lower in sugars than later maturing plants. Sugars were not correlated with yield or pedicel type. Fruit from indeterminate plants had significantly more sugars than from determinate plants. Six random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers linked to high sugars were found, five dominant (OPAE 4, UBC 731, UBC 744, UBC 489, UBC 290) and one co-dominant (UBC 269). Five of the markers were also linked to small fruit size and one of these also was linked to low yield (UBC 290). The sixth marker (UBC 269) was linked to indeterminate plant habit. UBC 731, UBC 489, and possibly OPAE 4 were in one linkage group, while UBC 744 and UBC 290 were in another linkage group. Combinations of all the markers together explained 35% of the sugar variation in the F2 grown in Spring 2002.