Vol. 10, Issue 8 (2021)

Author(s):
Pugalendhi L, S Bharathi, R Swarna Priya and M Velmurugan

Abstract:
Tomato is universally considered as “Protective food” due to the presence of health promoting compounds. Interference of biotic and abiotic stresses drastically reduces the yield and quality of tomato. Considering this bottlenecks, cleft grafting was attempted in tomato involving three wild Solanum species viz., Solanum torvum, Solanum sisymbrifolium and Solanum capsicoides and two tomato hybrids viz., TNAU tomato hybrid CO 3 and Shivam and evaluated under shade net condition for yield and quality. The results of the experiment revealed that TSS and titrable acidity was superior (79 ̊Brix and 0.79%) in TNAU tomato hybrid CO 3 grafted onto Solanum sisymbrifolium rootstock and ascorbic acid (37.92 mg/100g), total chlorophyll (2.81 mg/g), pH (5.63), lycopene (5.69 mg/100g) was higher in Shivam grafted on Solanum sisymbrifolium. Similarly, total phenol content was high in TNAU tomato hybrid CO 3 grafted on to Solanum torvum rootstock (3.73 mg/g). Enzyme activity such as peroxidase was higher (1.34 g/min) in immature fruits of TNAU tomato hybrid CO 3 grafted on to Solanum torvum rootstock and matured fruits of Shivam grafted on to Solanum torvum (0.91 g/min) rootstock. Increased catalase activity(1.92 µg of H₂O₂/g/min) was noticed in immature fruits of Shivam grafted on Solanum torvum rootstock and in matured fruits of TNAU tomato hybrid CO 3 grafted on to Solanum sisymbrifolium rootstock (1.32 µg of H₂O₂/g/min). Among the graft combinations solasodine content was observed more in Shivam grafted on to Solanum torvum rootstock (0.028%).The biochemical and quality parameters is not altered by grafting and from this study it could be interfered that the above traits are determined by the scion not by the rootstocks.