Inheritance of Low Temperature Sprouting Ability in F1 Tomato Crosses1

Inheritance of the ability of tomato ( Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) to sprout at 10°C was evaluated in a diallel study involving 7 inbred parents. For each parental and F 1 progeny family, sprouting indices were used to estimate genetic and environmental components of variation. Significant additive gene effects with partial dominance for inability to sprout at low temperature were found. Epistatic gene effects were not important, but a significant maternal effect was found. The estimate of narrow sense heritability was 69% and that for broad sense heritability was 85%.