Abstract
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is one of the most important vegetable crops under solanaceous
group which can be grown both under open field conditions and greenhouses. Tomato has achieved
high popularity especially in the recent years because of lycopene’s anti-oxidative activities and
anti-cancerous functions. The cultivated tomato has been used in genetic studies because of the ease
with which it can be easily manipulated and also its diversity present within the population. The most
important breeding techniques used in order to improve tomato has been the method of
hybridization followed by pedigree selection. Among all the methods, the back cross method of
breeding has been used to transfer the desirable traits from the wild species to cultivated varieties.
Breeding methods like pedigree methods, single descent method in combination with the molecular
approaches have been found to be useful. Tomato has presented as an example for gene transfer from
uncultivated into cultivated cultivars for development of improved varieties of the qualitative traits.
Till now the achievements are through different traditional breeding methods. It is the need of the
hour to use the traditional method in combination with the recent approaches which takes less time
to develop a variety. The population of the country is increasing day by day and to meet the
requirement of the whole country, breeder need to develop the high yielding varieties by the use of
the combined application of traditional breeding and plant biotechnology methods. Marker-Assisted
Selection might prove to be a valuable tool for tomato breeding.
