Tomato (
Solanum lycopersicum
L.) is one of the most
economically important vegetables in the world. Mexico
is considered as its center of domestication and there is
a large genetic diversity. Grafting in tomato has grown
for various purposes including the increase of yield. An
alternative use of native tomato genotypes is as rootstocks
for grafting improved tomato. The objective of this work
was to evaluate native accessions of tomato as rootstocks
to identify outstanding genotypes for their potential to be
used as rootstocks in tomato production. An experiment
was conducted for two cropping cycles (2014 and 2015)
in greenhouse and hydroponic conditions, in a randomized
complete block design (RCBD) with three replicates
and 10 plants per experimental unit. Treatments were
formed by a combination of nine native tomatoes and two
commercial rootstocks with two hybrids used as scions.
Twelve traits were recorded and most of the treatments
were significantly different (
P < 0.05) from each other for
these traits. The accessions LOR-22, LOR-77, LOR-81,
LOR-84, LOR-95 and LOR-100 with the hybrid ‘El Cid’,
and LOR-81, LOR-84 and LOR-100 with the hybrid ‘Sun
7705’, increased significantly yield by 19% and 22%,
respectively, compared to ungrafted control. Moreover,
characteristics related to fruit quality were preserved with
grafting. The best combination scion/rootstock (‘Cid’/100)
yielded 30% higher than hybrid ‘El Cid’ without grafting
and 16% higher than the commercial rootstock ‘Multifort’.
This allowed identifying genotypes of Mexican native
tomatoes with great potential to be used as rootstocks or
as source of germplasm for rootstock development.
