Germplasm Resources in Lycopersicon

Abstract

During the last 30 years tomato breeders have succeeded in attaining significant improvement of the crop for yields, quality and resistance attributes. However, the problems of fruit quality, improvement of the content of sugars, dry matter, vitamins therein were not solved. No commercial cultivars resistant to salinity, drought, heat and moisture deficiency or excess are available. Few cultivars are resistant to pests and bacterial diseases, or have complex resistance. Wild species and primitive cultivars present valuable initial material for said trends in the breeding. Broad-based genetic materials are essential to meet a number of breeding objectives. Breeders can no longer be dependent on the basic stocks of cultivars which they inherited from their predecessors. And, therefore, it is obvious that a much wider range of germplasm is required by the breeders today than had been available in the past, including wild species, land races and primitive and modern cultivars.