Comparison of Morphological Characteristics of Twelve Cultivars of Tomato Determinate Plants and Their Impact on Yield and its Structure

Experiment took place in the open field in the Vegetable Experimental Station of Agricultural University near Cracow in the years 2008-2010. In the experiment twelve, polish-bred determinate tomato cultivars: Sokal F1, Batory F1, Rejtan F1, Hetman F1, Babinicz, Luban, Mieszko F1, III A F1, Awizo F1, Ondraszek, Talon and Hubal were used. In the end of growing season, morphological features of plant were measured, concerning: height of plant, number of lateral shoots, length and thickness of the internode and the number of inflorescences per plant. Harvesting was performed once, at the stage of maturity of individual cultivars. The yield and its structure was calculated. The results were statistically analyzed using NIR Fisher's test, with p=0.05. The dependences of the marketable yield and total yield of tomato plants from morphological characteristics that may affect the yield were analyzed, using multiple regression. The amount of total and marketable yield was negatively correlated with an extensive vegetative growth of tomato plants. Among all the tested cultivars Ondraszek was characterized by the most preferred morphological features and creates one of the highest yields. Cultivars Ondraszek, Sokal F1 and Batory F1 were characterized higher marketable yield, than ‘Hetman F1’. Total and marketable yield depended about 40% on tomato plant morphological features.