Abstract
Capsicum (Solanaceae), comprising of sweet and hot chilli pepper, is a globally known spice crop. This genus is well known for its huge genetic diversity at intra- and inter-species level. Diversity among Akabarechilli landraces, a unique Capsicum from Nepal, has not been studied so far. The present study characterized thirty accessions of Akabarechilli using 26 qualitative and 21 quantitative agro-morphological markers at the experimental plots of National Genebank, Khumaltar, Nepal during the summer season of 2018/019. Using principal component analysis, the first- principal components with eigen-values more than 1 contributed 25% of the variability among accessions for quantitative traits, whereas the first principal components with eigen-values more than 1 contributed 22.2% of the variability among accessions for qualitative traits. These findings suggested a wide range of morphological variations among the tested accessions. Based on qualitative and quantitative traits, 30 accessions were grouped into 6 distinct clusters by Euclidian distance and average method. Accessions CO-11048 and CO-11050 under cluster-III were round shape fruit type and accessions CO-11044, CO- 11046 andCO-11047 under cluster-I were high fruiting with longer fruitbearing period and could be utilized for breeding purpose as these are the traits preferred by consumers or processors in Nepalese market. SAARC J. Agric., 19(2): 37-55 (2021)
Highlights
The genus Capsicum is an important fruit vegetable that has been widely consumed throughout the world mainly as a spice (Orobiyi et al, 2017), comprising nearly 40 species (Garcia et al, 2016; Barboza et al, 2019)
A total of 30 Akabarechilli accessions collected from five districts of eastern Nepal (Table 1) were characterized at the research field of the National Agriculture Genetic Resources Center (NAGRC), Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC), Khumaltar from April 2019 to January 2020
Diversity assessment based on morphological characters was done using some statistical tools viz descriptive statistics, diversity index, multivariate analysis such as principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis, that were used by different authors (Orobiyi et al, 2017, Mellidou et al, 2010)
Summary
The genus Capsicum is an important fruit vegetable that has been widely consumed throughout the world mainly as a spice (Orobiyi et al, 2017), comprising nearly 40 species (Garcia et al, 2016; Barboza et al, 2019). Out of 40 species of the genus Capsicum, only five species such as C. annuum L., C. chinense Jacq., C. frutescens L., C. baccatum L. and C. pubescens Ruiz and Pav. have been cultivated (Costa et al, 2006). C. annuum, C. microcarpum (Syn C. baccatum), and C. frutescens were reported in Nepal (Sugiyama et al, 2018) as local landraces. Landraces are the early cultivated forms of a crop species, evolved from a wild population, and not manipulated by plant breeders (Joshi, 2017). One of the globally important landraces is 'Akabare' of chili pepper (Joshi, 2017). Chilli fruits serve as a source of vitamins (A, B, C, E, K, B2), proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, fibre, and minerals (Ca, P, Fe) (Bhadragoudar and Patil, 2011)
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