VARIABILITY OF SHELF LIFE AND SOME QUALITY TRAITS OF TOMATILLO FRUIT (Physalis ixocarpa Brot.) ESTIMATED FROM F2 GENERATION

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at experimental field, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka. Bangladesh during the period from October 2018 to April 2019 to analyze the diversity of tomatillo genotypes in their qualitative traits. Eighteen genotypes were used for the study. Genotype G 5 showed the highest vit-C among all genotypes whereas highest days of shelf life was found in G 7 . G 10 gave the best result on lycopene content followed by rest of the genotypes and highest brix percentage was found in G 10 . G 8 showed highest amount of non-reducing sugar and G 1 showed highest amount of reducing sugar. High to moderate GCV and PCV values were shown by all the characters except total sugar (%) that showed low GCV and PCV values. Vit-C had significant and positive correlation with shelf life (r=0.523**) and brix (r=0.355*). This indicates that if Vit-C will increase, shelf life and brix will increase as same degree. Considering higher heritability and higher genetic advance selection of genotype based on pH value, Vit-C, brix, lycopene at 472nm, total sugar and non-reducing sugar would be more satisfactory. The highest positive direct effect was observed in shelf life can be used as either direct or indirect selection criteria to improve brix percentage and other traits those are positively associated with it. Selecting plants with higher shelf life of fruits will increase other associated qualitative traits specially fruit brix. There was moderate level of variation present among eighteen genotypes of tomatillo due to low inter genotypic distance. Considering the quality performance of tomatillo genotypes G 5 could be selected for higher Vit-C, G 7 could be selected for higher shelf life and G 8 could be selected for higher non-reducing sugar. Highest Brix percentage as well as Lycopene contents belongs to G 10 genotype.