Through hybridization and selection breeding programme carried out at
Department of Agricultural Botany in the Agricultural Experiments and Researches
Station, Faculty of Agriculture, Cairo University, to increased yield and improve quality
of tomato crop, a few number of F2 -transgressive segregant plants were obtained
from crossing of three tomato cultivars (Marmande,UC 97-3 and Tamina). Viability test
of seeds for all F2-segregant plants was done to select F2-segregants which showed
high seed viability. Seeds of F2-segregant plants which showed high viability as well as seeds of
the original cultivars and of imported hybrid (Grandure ) were sown on is" February,
1999 in seedling trays containing a mixture of peatmoss and vermiculite at ratio of 1: 1.
Six weeks later, seedlings of all genotypes were harvested from trays and
transplanted in a plastic greenhouse in a randomized complete block design with
three replicates to follow up the vegetative and reproductive growth of the F3-
generation in comparison with their parental cultivars and imported hybrid. The experiment was replicated in the second season at the end of Februa.y,
2000 to follow up the vegetative and reproductive growth of F4-generation in the
same manner that reported in F3-generation. The evaluation included studies on morphological characters, earliness, yield
and fruit quality characters as well as the anatomical structure of the main stem. The
obtained results indicated that all studied characters were significantly affected by the
genotype and some selections surpassed significantly their parental cultivars and the
imported hybrid in this respect. In F3-generation, it is worthy to note that the selection
U x M 20-22 recorded 1338.2g for fruit yield per plant which exceeded significanily the
best cultivar Marmande (782.6g fruit yield per plant) by 71% and the imported hybrid
Grandure (1015.7g fruit yield per plant) by 31.8%. In F4-generation, the selection M x
T 21-2 recorded 1740.0g for fruit yield per plant which exceeded significantly the best
cultivar Marmande (1037.6g fruit yield per plant) by 67.8% and the imported hybrid
Grandure (1289.5g fruit yield per plant) by 34.9%.