Screening Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) Landraces collected from Aegean-Mediterranean Region of Anatolia: Diversity in organic acid

Abstract

Abstract Tomato landraces can be a source for breeding new cultivars to improve the fruit quality in terms of organic acids. Number of 19 tomato landraces spreading along the Mediterranean coasts of Anatolia was evaluated to determine the basic internal quality parameters and organic acids. Fruit weight, diameter, length, pH, titrable acidty (TA%), soluble solid content (SSC%), SSC/TA ratio and organic acids including oxalic (OA), tartaric (TarA), malic (MA), malonoic (MalA), lactic (LA), acetic (AA), citric (CA) and ascorbic acids (AscA) were evaluated. High diversity was found for the traits among landraces. It was determined that within landraces the most abundant organic acid was citric acid. On the other hand, the highest and lowest values for CA were found in Ege 8 as 105.73 and TR62707 as 31.10 mg g− 1, respectively, which can be suggested as a promising source for future breeding programs. Ascorbic acid (AscA) was the lowest among total organic acids, which fell within the range of 0.06–0.12 mg.g− 1 (as 64–116 µg.g− 1). Furthermore, the highest and lowest malic acid content between tomato landraces was determined as 8.23 mg g− 1 in TR49646 and 5.11 mg g− 1 in Ege 6. The TR49646 landrace can be recommended as a source of high malic acid content. On the other hand, the lowest oxalic acid content was determined in the landrace TR63233 from a health point of view. Multidimensional scale analysis also confirmed the candidates that have been determined by the anova and one-way anom tests. Results showed that there was a high diversity among landraces and the identified traits could be useful in selection and breeding for improving new cultivars.