Abstract
Abstract The present study was developed to identify the direct and indirect effects of fruit production traits in passion fruit on traits of agronomic interest as well as determine possible changes in associations between the characters after three cycles of recurrent selection. Twenty three half-sibling progenies were evaluated for the characteristics number of fruits per plant; fruit mass per plant (g); pulp percentage (%); fruit length and diameter (mm); peel thickness (mm); total soluble solids content (ºBrix); pH; and yield per plant (kg). Fruit production per plant was considered the main variable, while the others were considered explanatory variables. Within-family heritability (h2ad) values were lower than the mean heritability of the progeny (h2mp). Path analysis revealed that the direct selection of genotypes with higher number of fruits or fruit average mass results in increased production per plant; however, indirect selection is inefficient in providing simultaneous gains. Therefore, by observing the correlations throughout selection cycles, it can be stated that although production per plant is the most important variable, preference should be given to the use of selection indices, as there are better chances of obtaining gains for fruit quality and production traits in selection across half-sibling passion fruit progenies.
Highlights
Passiflora originates from Tropical America, with 150 of its species native to Brazil
The highest values were obtained for the traits production per plant and fruit mass (15,829 and 1,179), indicating a greater influence of the environment on the expression of these traits
Silva and Viana (2012) evaluated 140 full-sibling progenies of passion fruit originating from the second recurrent-selection cycle and obtained phenotypic variance estimates of 1,789 and 328.25 for number of fruits per plant and fruit mass, respectively
Summary
Passiflora originates from Tropical America, with 150 of its species native to Brazil. Ever since the 1970s, Brazil has stood out as the world’s largest producer of passion fruit, which has been the result of its growing cultivated area. In 2016, the national crop reached the production of 703,489 t, with a planted area of approximately 50,000 ha (IBGE, 2016) This crop is compromised by limiting factors such as low yield, caused by the lack of genotypes adapted to the producing regions, among other aspects. For this reason, selective breeding has become essential to meet these demands in the production sector (SILVA et al, 2009)
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