Exploitation of Heterosis among Phenotypically Diverse Capsicum Parents for Important Fruit Traits

ABSTRACT

Abstract One nuclear male sterile (NMS) line of chilli pepper and eight elite inbred lines of bell pepper were evaluated in a line × tester mating design to project heterotic F1's through studying plant growth and yield performance of developed hybrids in relation to phenotypic distance between their parental lines. Hybrids and their parental lines were grown and evaluated under poly-net house conditions at the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, India during the years 2017-2019. Pooled over the year, mean squares (MS) due to genotypes was recorded significant (p=0.05) for all the traits studied, suggesting that there existed significant differences among the genotypic means that included nine parental lines and their eight F1 hybrids. The MS due to the G × Y interaction effects were also significantly different for plant growth and fruit traits, indicating differential response of each genotype in the year. On the basis of heterotic performance, the hybrids namely MS-12 × PAU SM-31 had positive significant mid-parent heterosis (MPH) for total fruit yield plant-1 (96.68**), number of fruits plant-1 (51.98**), pericarp thickness (47.91**), fruit length (25.77**), and plant height (63.35**). Apart from this cross-combination, the hybrids MS-12 × PAU SM-3 and MS-12 × PAU SM-9 also depicted MPH for total fruit yield plant-1 (71.22** and 50.64**), fruit length (41.98** and 68.09**) and number of fruits plant-1 (27.60** and 44.73**). Based on better parent heterosis (BPH), the hybrid MS-12 × PAU SM-31 was found to be superior in respect of total fruit yield plant-1 (36.37**) and pericarp thickness (11.27**). These hybrids seem to be the utmost valuable materials for the future breeding program of bell pepper.