TRANSGRESSIVE SEGREGANT OF TOMATO F4 POPULATIONS BASED ON FRUIT YIELD AND LYCOPENE CONTENT

Lycopene is an essential antioxidant found in tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum L.) that can inhibit and prevent cell damage in the body. Thus, enhancing lycopene content is one of the crucial objectives in tomato breeding. Efforts should focus on assembling the tomato with high fruit yield and good quality by conducting transgressive segregant selection through plant breeding programs. The study aimed to select tomato lines with the potential for transgressive segregation based on high fruit yield and lycopene content. The research began in an augmented design combined with factors comprising 54 non -repeated tomato lines, compared with four repeated standard cultivars (Mawar, Chung, Karina, and Tymoti). The tomato lines' planting into seven blocks had no repeats, while the check cultivars for comparison engaged in repeated planting in each block. The observations underwent the analysis of variance (ANOVA), path analysis, correlation, heritability (narrow sense), and transgressive segregants. Based on transgressive segregation, the high -yielding tomato lines selected bore analysis for lycopene content. Based on the plant height and productive bunches per plant (directly supporting the fruit yield), the 14 promising transgressive segregant families' selection comprised 10 MC crosses, MC10.10, MC10.4, MC11.4, MC12.3, MC27.12, MC27.7, MC29.4, MC35.7, MC74.12, and MC8.3 and four KM crosses, KM23.2, KM26.1, KM30.5, and KM.5.5. For increased lycopene content, the five F4 families MC10.10, MC27.12, MC35.7, KM23.2, and KM30.5 showed better performance wherein selecting 10 transgressive segregant lines resulted with high lycopene content and fruit yield.