Participatory Evaluation of Tomato Varieties for Commercial Cultivation During Rainy Season Under Kaymore Plateau and Satpura Hills – Agro-Climatic Zone of Madhya Pradesh

Four tomato varieties, namely Kashi Vishesh, Kashi Anupam, Kashi Amrit and Hisar Arun (S-7), were evaluated against the variety Navoday in farmer's field with farmer’s participation for yield potential and other yield characters at Satna, Madhya Pradesh during rainy seasons of two consecutive years 2009 and 2010. The experiment was arranged in complete randomized block design with 5 replications, farmer as a replication. The results of the experiment revealed that all the tested varieties have more yield potentiality than Navoday variety. Kashi Vishesh took the least time to flowering (44.49 days) and first harvest (73.14 days) after transplanting, gave the highest survivability of plants at harvest (91.25%), produced the maximum number of clusters per plant (11.90), number of flowers per cluster (1.99), number of fruits per plant (23.02), the highest marketable fruit yield (290.29 q per ha) and had the low incidence of Yellow Leaf Curl Virus disease. The investigation led to infer that Kashi Vishesh was the best-performing variety, and therefore, it could be recommended for commercial production during rainy season under rain fed conditions in well drained soils of the undulating terrain. Kashi Anupam with moderate high yield and some tolerance to Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus might be regarded as other potential variety for the rainy season production of tomato.