EPISTATIC GENE EFFECTS ON THE FRUIT SHAPE OF THE PARENTS OF F1, F2, BC1 AND BC2 PROGENY

We investigated the shape of tomato fruit by evaluating the ratio between the horizontal and vertical diameter in diallele crossings of 6 parental genotypes (D-150, S-49, S-35 and H-52, Kg-ž and SP-109). The diallele and their progeny (F1, F2, BC1 and BC2), were used to investigate the mode of inheritance by generation mean analysis (Mather and Jinks, 1982). Additive gene effects were the most significant in affecting the inheriting the fruit shape. Most frequently expressed epistatic effects were the additive x dominance interaction, followed by additive x additive gene effects. The duplicate type of epistasis was relatively stable.