Diverse morphological and molecular patterns of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum Linn.) accessions

Field and molecular experiments were conducted between May and August 2021 at the research farm of the Department of Botany, University of Ibadan and International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan respectively. Morphological and molecular variability in 40 tomato accessions were investigated in this study. Five accessions from local markets in Ibadan, two varieties from seed companies, three varieties from Benue State and Oyo State, and thirty accessions from the National Center for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology (NACGRAB) were evaluated. The experiment was arranged in a randomised complete block design (RCBD) with three replicates. Significant (p < 0.05) variation was observed for days to germination, hypocotyl colour, primary leaf length, primary leaf width, number of leaves, plant height, number of leaves under first inflorescence, number of inflorescence, days to first fruiting, foliage density and internode length (cm). The cumulative values for the first three components (74.80%) accounted for variation among the 40 accessions in the principal component analysis. All yield related characters correlated positively with both the number of leaves and plant height. The study revealed that NGB/05081, NGB/00714, NGB/05075, NGB/00696, NGB/00735b and Hausa (Dugbe) accessions performed the best in growth and yield characters, while NGB/00735b and NGB/00759 were early maturing accessions. The Tp 124 and Tp 121 primers were highly polymorphic and had high gene diversities. Sixteen tomato accessions were amplified for marker genes nodZ-A and nodZ-B. Five of these accessions showed high growth, while seven produced high yield, implying positive influence on the improvement of these accessions. However, the nifh marker gave no amplification.