Inheritance of flower traits in ornamental pepper

Abstract

Diallel crosses provide estimates of useful parameters in the selection of parents for hybridization. They also help in understanding the gene action behind the determination of characters of interest. The objective of this study was to determine the genetic control of flower traits in ornamental pepper based on a complete diallel with parents F1’s and reciprocal crosses. The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse atLaboratório de Biotecnologia Vegetal, Centro de Ciências Agrárias, Universidade Federal da Paraíba (CCA-UFPB). Seven accessions of ornamental pepper belonging to the CCA-UFPB Germplasm Bank UFPB001, UFPB004, UFPB77.3, UFPB099, UFPB134, UFPB137 and UFPB390wereused. The morphological analysis was performed on following quantitative Capsicum descriptors: days for flowering (DFL), flower diameter (FD), petal length (PL), number of petals (NP), number of stamens (NS), anther length (AL) and fillet length (FL). The data were previously submitted to analysis of variance and then to diallel analysis. All evaluated traits were adequate to the additive-dominant model. There are possibilities of genetic gains in breeding programs, for the NP, NS, AL and FL in ornamental peppers.