Traits Associated with Drought Tolerance in Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.)

Abstract

Across the globe, tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is a commonly used vegetable for culinary purposes. Despite its economic importance, its production is decreasing now a days due to the occurrence of various abiotic stresses like drought. Hence, it is important to understand the mechanism of drought tolerance to sustain tomato production. A field experiment was conducted with drought tolerant and susceptible genotypes to understand the mechanism of tolerance or susceptibility. Drought stress was imposed during the flowering stage for 19 days. The physiological traits like relative water content, pigmentation, flower abscission percentage and fruit set percentage were recorded. The results showed that relative water content was decreased by 20.47 % in the SL CBE G 26 and 40.98 % in the SL CBE G 23. However, the flower drop was highest in the line SL CBE G 23 (23.29%) and lowest in SL CBE G 26 (19.14 %) under drought stress. The line SL CBE G 23 had lower fruit set than SL CBE 26. Hence, the study confirmed that SL CBE G 26 is a drought tolerant line and drought tolerance is associated with increased water retention in the tissue, eventually resulting in decreased flower drop and increased fruit set percentage.