| dc.description.abstract | Influence of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) seedling grafting on the plant growth, fruit yield and quality, and disease tolerance were investigated using 3 cultivars (Big Beef, Celebrity, Cannonball) as scions and two Solanum species (B-blocking, Maxifort) as a rootstock in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The grafted plants were statistically higher in values for stem diameter, leaf chlorophyll, and fruit carotenoid contents. Similarly, the scion/rootstock combination ‘Big Beef/Maxifort’ and ‘Big Beef/B-blocking’ had prolonged days to maturity and gives a higher yield than the non-grafted ‘Big Beef’. Grafting seedling on ‘Maxifort’ and ‘B-blocking’ rootstocks improves the fruit quality like titratable acidity (TA), fruit firmness, but didn’t alter the pH, total soluble solid (TSS), lycopene and TSS/TA. Also, grafted treatment ‘Big Beef/Maxifort’ was found to be a highly disease resistant treatment when compared to the ‘Big Beef’ control with mean relative effect 0.074. | en_US |
