Heritability of Yield Components Under Irrigated and Drought Conditions in Andigenum Potatoes

Abstract

Drought is one of the major abiotic factors that affect potato production in the tropics and sub-tropics. Molecular plant breeding offers promising opportunities for developing drought tolerant cultivars, but genetic gains to be achieved through breeding depends strongly on the genetic variance and heritability of traits used in the selection process. In the present study, genetic variance and heritability of tuber yield and its components were estimated in the native potato cultivar group Andigenum, expected to include promising drought tolerant progenitors. Twenty-seven full sib families obtained from crossing 18 parents arranged in 3 mating sets were grown under irrigated and terminal drought conditions. Heritability for tuber yield, estimated from female to male variance components was 0.68 and 0.41, respectively, in the irrigated treatment, and only 0.18 and 0.06 under drought conditions. Tuber number was highly significantly correlated to tuber yield but the heritability of this trait (estimated both from female to male variance) was lower than yield heritability and its non-additive genetic variance was higher than its additive genetic variance, particularly when estimated from the female variance component. Heritability of average weight per tuber estimated for male variance component was very high under both irrigated and drought conditions. Its additive genetic variance was much higher than its non-additive genetic variance. However, average weight per tuber correlated to tuber yield within parents but not within families. These results indicate that selection for increased tuber yield under drought conditions in the Andigenum cultivar group may be slow due to its low heritability and high value of non-additive genetic variance. They also suggest that yield components may not be useful as indirect selection criterion for yield, because of their low heritability and/or poor association with yield. The identification of drought tolerance related traits with high heritability and closely associated to tuber yield under drought is consequently required to improve adaptation of potato to drought-prone conditions and efficient utilization of Andigenum potatoes for this purpose.