Assessment of the effect of pruning systems on plant developmental cycle-yield and quality of selected indeterminate tomato lines

Abstract

Preliminary evaluations have shown that indeterminate new tomato breeding lines produce high yields of large fruits. Pruning systems have been reported to regulate tomato fruit size and overall yield performance. A study to evaluate the effect of pruning levels (non pruning, single stem, two stems and three stems) on plant developmental cycle, yield, and quality of five indeterminate tomato breeding lines and one commercial cultivar was conducted from November 2009 to March 2010 at the Horticulture Unit of Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro, Tanzania. Results showed that two stem pruned plants gave the highest number of marketable fruits per plant. The highest number of non marketable tomato fruits per hectare was observed in unpruned plants. Tomato lines differed in their performance, with the longest period of harvesting, highest number of flowers flowers, highest percentage of fruit-set, the highest yield, high number of marketable fruits observed in lines P20-(03) and 186-2(06), which is probably a result of their genetic characteristic. It was concluded that, the large fruit size of the new tomato breeding lines can be reduced to meet consumer’s needs without reducing yield by two and three stem pruning in lines P20-03 and S186-2(07).