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In order to evaluate performance of genotypes and study the direct and indirect effects of characters on fruit yield, thirty six tomato genotypes introduced from different countries were grown at Humera Agricultural Research Center during 2010/11 cropping season under irrigation condition. The trial was laid out in 6 x 6 simple lattice design in two replications. The maximum marketable yield was obtained from the genotype CLN-2037-A (49.20 tons ha-1) and the minimum with H-1350 (3.00 tons ha-1). Estimates of genotypic direct and indirect effects of various characters on fruit yield showed that number of matured fruits plant-1 (0.798) and average weight of fruits plant-1 (0.644) had highest positive direct contribution to fruit yield. This indicated direct selection based on these characters will improve fruit yield. On the contrary, fruit set percentage (-0.447) and fruit polar diameter (-0.392) exerted highest negative direct effect on fruit yield ha-1 .

A field experiment was conducted at Humera Agricultural Research Center experimental site for two consecutive years (2011/2012 and 2012/2013 cropping season) under irrigation condition to evaluate performance of hot pepper varieties for green pod yield and yield components in western Tigray, Northern Ethiopia. A total of six hot pepper varieties were used as test genotypes. Least Significant Difference (LSD) and Pearson correlation were used to compare treatment means and association of characters. Combined analysis of variance explained that all the traits except days to 50% flowering and days to 50% fruiting showed highly significant difference (p<0.01) among the varieties. Among the six varieties the highest marketable green pod yield was found from Jeju (19.47 t ha-1) which is statistically at par with marecofana (19.35 t ha-1). Marecofana scored the largest green pod weight (7.3 gram) followed by Jeju (6.2 g). Correlation analysis showed that marketable green pod yield per hectare had highly significant positive association with fruit yield per plant (r=0.705), single fruit weight (r=0.668) and fruit diameter (r=0.675) indicating that selection based on these trait improves marketable green pod yield of hot pepper in the specific agroecology.

The objective of the study was to estimate genetic diversity among tomato genotypes. Thirty-six genotypes introduced from different countries were evaluated at Humera Agricultural Research Center, Northern Ethiopia, during 2010/2011 in 6 × 6 simple lattice design with two replications. Cluster analysis was made by average linkage method. Mahalanobis distance (D 2 ) was used to estimate the genetic distance between pair of clusters. Estimates of cluster analysis revealed that the thirty-six genotypes were grouped in to six distinct clusters. Genetic distance between any pair of clusters showed very highly significant difference. The maximum and minimum distances were recorded between clusters IV and V (1805.00) and cluster II and III (81.94) respectively. This indicated the existence of a possibility to improve genotypes through hybridization from any pair of clusters and subsequent selection can be made from the segregant generations. Principal component analysis showed that the first six principal components explained about 83.03% of the total variation. Generally, the study confirmed presence of adequate genetic diversity between any pair of clusters which could be exploited through hybridization.