Morphological, molecular, and physic-chemical characterization of traditional Moroccan tomato (Solanum Lycopersicum L.) genotypes

This study provides the first explicit use of morphological, molecular, and physic-chemical data to examine distinctness and relationships between 8 traditional Moroccan tomato varieties of the species (Solanum lycopersicum L.) and one pure line Saint Pierre (SP) from Vita Morocco Company used as a control. For the morphological traits, significant differences were observed between the traditional genotypes and variation concerns the number of flowers per inflorescence, fruit shape, fruit color, and fruit weight. Heterogeneity was found in fruit shape within the same varieties as Figuig I (FI), Rissani Orange (RO), Rissani white (RB), and Berkane II (BII). It is unavoidable to purify them for the registration as conservation varieties. The Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) molecular markers, Tom 236-237 and TMS52 that associated with some fruit traits, showed the highest polymorphism degree with five polymorphic amplicons for the local traditional tomatoes, which suggest a putative association among the phenotypic and molecular data. Tomato qualities measured by some physicchemical parameters such as acidity, pH, conductivity, and total phenolic contents allow to distinguish the studied traditional varieties. The genotypes Hoceima (H) and Figuig II (FII) particularly merit considerable attention because of their phenols richness, high acidity, and low pH. Finally, the observed variations between the studied genotypes could be used by the tomato breeders in different hybridization programs for the crop improvement.