Evaluation of tomato rootstock in Sicilian greenhouse growing conditions

Greenhouse tomato production is one of the most important agriculture Italian vegetable production which is of interest for all the country’s regions, focusing on southern Italy. The critical point of breeders for this crop is to obtain a high level of sustainability needed in organic farming. The aim of the present work was the evaluation of 21 genotypes of tomato rootstocks originated by several crosses aimed to transfer interesting resilience traits such as Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. radicis lycopersici (FORL), Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV) and Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) producing interspecific and intraspecific hybrids. The genotype ‘Creativo’ F1 hybrid was chosen as a control grafted and as scion for the grafted plants. The plants were grown inside the greenhouse at single stem till the eighth truss at 3 plants m-2 crop density and were placed following randomized blocks experimental design. Tomato genotypes were characterized for their yield traits such as the trusses weight, fruit number truss-1, red and green fruits truss-1 and cumulative production until the eighth truss; only eight trusses were considered for the phenotypical analysis. Fruit (longitudinal and transversal) and plant (stem and basal stem) diameters were calculated and compared. Tomato phenotyping was followed by the qualitative analysis of trusses with chromatic parameters (a*, b*, L*) and soluble solids content. The results showed significant variations among genotypes: rootstock cross BT04060 × BT00120 registered the higher yield and single fruits weight (908.28 g) followed by BT2510 × BT00250 (861.36 g) and BT02220 × BT00230 (853.29 g). The higher fruits number truss-1 value was registered in BT2510 × BT00250 and was 12.19. The present work is included in Horizon 2020 BRESOV (Breeding for Resilient, Efficient and Sustainable Organic Vegetable production) project.