Diallel Analysis of Chilli Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) Genotypes for Morphological and Fruit Biochemical Traits

Aiswarya C S; Vijeth S; Sreelathakumary I; Prashant Kaushik

doi:10.3390/plants9010001

Diallel Analysis of Chilli Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) Genotypes for Morphological and Fruit Biochemical Traits

Plants (Basel). 2019 Dec 18;9(1):1. doi: 10.3390/plants9010001.

Authors

Aiswarya C S¹, Vijeth S¹, Sreelathakumary I¹, Prashant Kaushik^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Vegetable Science, College of Agriculture, Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur, Kerala 680656, India.
² Instituto de Conservación y Mejora de la Agrodiversidad Valenciana, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia 46022, Spain.
³ Nagano University, 1088 Komaki, Ueda, 386-0031 Nagano, Japan.

Abstract

Chilli pepper is commercially cultivated as a spice and is also used for the extraction of a colouring agent. Here, we performed a diallel genetic study involving five chilli pepper varieties. Parents and their hybrid were evaluated for fifteen morphological and five biochemical traits over two crop seasons under open field conditions. Variation was recorded for all of the studied traits. Similarly, significant values for general combining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) variance were obtained for all of the traits. The ratio of σ² SCA/σ² GCA indicates that non-additive gene effects were predominant for all the studied traits except for fruits plant^-¹. Based on SCA effects, cross combinations P2 × P5, and P4 × P5 were determined excellent for flesh thickness, yield components and vitamin C. These hybrids are recommended for multilocation testing to assess their suitability for commercial cultivation. Overall, this work presents useful information regarding the genetics of important morphological and biochemical traits in chilli pepper.

Keywords: ascorbic acid; capsaicin; chilli pepper; colour; combining ability; diallel; heterosis; oleoresin.