Genetics of Quality Attributes and Powdery Mildew Severity in Garden Pea (Pisum sativum Var. Hortense L.) under Sub Temperate Conditions of North-Western Himalayas

Abstract

Background: The choice of appropriate breeding method for improvement of traits depends largely on gene action. Hence, an understanding of the inheritance of quantitative traits is essential to develop an efficient breeding strategy.Methods: Twelve generations of three inter-varietal crosses involving four diverse parents of garden pea were studied for biochemical traits and powdery mildew disease severity to analyze the nature of gene effects by using generation mean anaylsis.Result: Duplicate type of epistasis was observed for protein content in all or one or other crosses. In most cases, the presences of linkage among interacting genes or higher order interactions at several loci were involved. Non-fixable gene effects were many times higher than fixable one in all the crosses indicating a major role non-additive gene effects in the inheritance of these traits. The type of gene effects along with presence of non-allelic interactions suggested the adoption of population improvement methods to break undesirable linkages through recombination. The other alternative can be to defer selection in the later generations by advancing segregating populations through bulk pedigree or SSD methods with one or two inter-matings like recurrent selection. Based on pod characteristics and powdery mildew disease severity203 single plant progenies were isolated over the generations of three crosses along with bulk seed following SSD and bulk method to isolate transgressive segregants.