Manunta, C.
For intravarietal crosses the acidity content seems to show a dominance of the lower parental value. These results, if confirmed, should have great importance for the betterment of many varieties and strains that, while very good for many characteristics, have an unfavorable acidity. In regard to other biochemical characters, in F1, the values are usually intermediate between the parental values; with some tendency toward the higher parental values as for heterosis effect.
Indication has been given of the more promising lines. Among interspecific crosses with L. pimpinellifolium, 4 strains are emerging having higher values of the optical residue and NaCl. The acidity ratio is no more than 8, varying between 5.86 and 6.74 notwithstanding that the percent is rather high. These lines were emerging since the first collecting and probably would have shown a remarkable amelioration in further collection; which, however, were not analysed.
Also crosses with L. hirsutum and multiplications of several already stabilized lines have been examined. Between the lines derived from "Comet x hirsutum 4" the line 645 is specially promising since--besides having all organoleptic and biochemical characteristic requested by Italian market for table tomatoes--it has the advantage of a quite high provitamin A content (thrice higher than the mean for normal varieties).