Studies on quality traits of open pollinated varieties and hybrids of tomato responsible for their shelf life at ambient conditions.

Quality attributes responsible for shelf-life of fruits of some promising open pollinated varieties and hybrids of tomato were analyzed at four durations of post-harvest storage i.e. 0, 3, 6 and 9- DAS at ambient conditions. The data on quality traits were statistically analyzed in split plot (in time) design. Open pollinated varieties/hybrids exhibited significant variability in average fruit weight, TSS, dry matter, ascorbic acid, titrable acidity, reducing sugars, sugar/acid ratio and fruit spoilage in all the four conditions i.e. open pollinated varieties/hybrids over durations of post-harvest storage, post-harvest durations over open pollinated varieties/hybrids, same open pollinated varieties/hybrids at different duration of post-harvest storage alongwith overall interactions. Considering the quality traits of tomato under aforesaid four conditions, fruits of hybrid 9402x Azad Type-3 seem to be the superior most since they showed statistically maximum TSS (6.35%), ascorbic acid (22.13 mg%), reducing sugars (3.54%), sugar/acid ratio (10.55) alongwith medium average fruit weight (70.66g), dry matter (7.36%) which are, in general, responsible for enhanced shelf life as tomato fruits of this hybrid showed no spoilage at 9-DAS followed by 8731 x Azad Type-3 (10%) and Azad Type-1(15%). Among correlation studies, TSS showed, by and large, significant positive association at all the four durations of storage with dry matter (r = 0.4169, 0.5390, 0.5920 and 0.6751), ascorbic acid (r = 0.8362, 0.8963, 0.8971 and 0.8164), reducing sugars (r = 0.8967, 0.8329, 0.8323 and 0.8042), and sugar/acid ratio (r = 0.7410, 0.7052, 0.9148 and 0.9265).