Assessment of the Local Tomato Landraces as Gene Conservation Reservoirs – Comparative Studies with an Industrial Hybrid

During this study, the vegetative and generative characteristics and quality parameters including acidity, pH, and ascorbic acid content, of nine local tomato landraces from Transylvania, Romania, were tested and parameters compared with an industrial hybrid cultivar. The results show that local tomato landraces performed much better than the hybrid cultivar, and that some parameters such as the lower acidity of these varieties makes them more valuable to consumers than most of the other parameters considered. No direct disease and pest assessments were possible during the study, because of the relative low occurrence of these observed (sometimes with a complete absence of any symptoms and pests whatsoever). These various features demonstrate that such landraces are valuable genetic reservoirs for future tomato cultivation programmes. Our present assessments were limited to nine landraces, but up to 100 such varieties are known to exist throughout Romania, Transylvania especially, therefore, further studies on this topic would undoubtedly provide further important insights into tomato cultivation, pest control, and breeding programmes in this country as well as elsewhere in Europe. .