GENETIC PARAMETERS FOR SYNGONANTHUS CHRYSANTHUS RUHLAND FOR A POTTED PLANT

Abstract

Syngonanthus chrysanthus Ruhland is a small rosette, capituliform herb that is distributed along Brazil in the states of Rio de Janeiro all the way to Rio Grande do Sul. It is an herbaceous plant with very short stem and linear leaves. It presents several stems on the same plant. Flower heads are semiglobosus. It is a heliophytic and selective hygrophyte species, typical and exclusive of coastal Brazilian resting. Dried and often dyed inflorescences have been found in the market as cut flower. This work aimed to evaluate the potential of three populations to obtain new individuals for the following agronomic traits of interest, as leaf length (LL), leaf width (LW), plant diameter (PD), plant height (PH), inflorescence diameter (ID), number of inflorescences (NI), and floral scape height (SH). Genetic parameters estimates of half-sib progenies were superior to environment variance for LL, LW, PD, PH and ID for populations 2 and 3, and LL and PH, for population 1. Heritability in the narrow sense was greater than 70% for traits LL, LW, PH in the three populations. For populations 2 and 3, PD and ID showed values higher than 77%. For NI, population 1 showed a heritability of 88%, while for populations 2 and 3 the values were 57 and 45% respectively. The SH heritability ranged from 40 to 63%. Estimates of genetic parameters obtained for S. chrysanthus are unedited and important for future selections aiming to use this species as an ornamental potted plant.