Study of tolerance of new tomato cultivars (Lycopersicon esculentum L.) to egyptian broomrape (Orobanche aegyptiaca Pers.) under greenhouse conditions

The use of tolerant cultivars is one of the most important methods for parasitic weed managing. In order to screen of 19 Serbian tomato cultivars tolerance to Orobanche aegyptiaca under greenhouse conditions, an experiment was arranged as a factorial experiment, based on completely randomized design with three replications. The tolerance of these cultivars was investigated in the presence and absence of broomrape in separately treatments. The results showed that among the studied Serbian cultivars, express, uragan, donator, red stone and leader cultivars were more tolerant than other cultivars. Despite of high dry weight production in express cultivar, it suffered the least damage (44.75%) compared to other cultivars. The lowest broomrape dry weight was observed at uragan and donator cultivars. However, their aboveground biomass reduced to 35.39% and 58.16% respectively. Despite the higher biomass production in fantom, ox heart, honey and profit cultivars in control treatments, they suffered severe damage (more than 80%) in infected treatments. It seems theses cultivars are more susceptible to broomrape than the others.