Identification of superior clones of Satureja rechingeri Jamzad. using progeny test

Abstract

Satureja rechingeri is a precious plant for the pharmaceutical, feed and food industries due to the high content of antimicrobials in essential oil, mainly carvacrol. As a part of domestication and introduction into the cultivation program, a poly cross design was performed to evaluate genetic parameters and the general combining ability of 58 promising clones of S. rechingeri. Half-sib family seeds were grown in an RCBD with ten replications, and plants were assessed for their quantitative and essential oil traits. General combining ability and genetic parameters, phenotypic and genotypic correlations were estimated for all assessed traits. Analysis of variance revealed significant variation among entries of all the characters, indicating the possibilities of exploiting the available variability for further genetic improvement. Estimates of the genotypic coefficient of variation (GCV) and phenotypic coefficient of variation (PCV) were highest for essential oil yield (98.38% and 213.95%) and essential oil content (91.60% and 135.14%) in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Broad sense heritability estimates for various traits ranged from 16.68 for leaf width to 91.88 for growth type. Essential oil traits showed a high and positive phenotypic and genotypic correlation with plant height, leaf width, number of lateral branches, plant fresh weight, plant dry weight, and growth type. The growth type, number of lateral branches, plant fresh weight, plant dry weight, leaf width, and number of main branches were identified as influential factors in increasing the quantity of S. rechingeri target traits essential oil traits, and dry weight. Based on general combining ability estimates of principal traits, half-sib families of S. rechingeri clones of ‘Z19′, ‘G48′, ‘Z16′, ‘K48′, ‘F3′, ‘K5′, ‘E41′, ‘G27′ and ‘F71′ showed the highest performance. These clones can be selected as parents of synthetic varieties or new genetic sources to select superior genotypes.