Inheritance of Palmitic, Oleic, Linoleic, and Linolenic Fatty Acids in Groat Oil of Oats1

Abstract

Ten matings among adapted oat (Avena sativa L.) cultivars were employed to study the inheritance of fatty‐acid composition of oat groat oil. Heritability estimates in six matings ranged from 0.33 to 0.56 using unreplicated hill plots for palmitic, oleic, linoleic, and linolenic acids. Heritabilities based on progeny means of the same six matings over two replicates at each of three locations were 0.68, 0.72, and 0.64 for palmitic, oleic, and linoleic acids, respectively. Effects of matings and matings ✕ locations interaction and variation among lines within the six matings were significant (P < 0.01) for palmitic, oleic, and linoleic acids. Correlations between contents of fatty acids in groat oil were: palmitic and oleic acid, −0.47; palmitic and linoleic, −0.30; palmitic and linolenic, −0.10; oleic and linoleic, −0.55; oleic and linolenic, −0.43; and linoleic and linolenic, −0.04. Additive gene action was the most important genetic component of variation among generation means of four additional matings for palmitic, oleic, and linoleic acids. Additive ✕ additive effects were significant for oleic acid in one mating and for linoleic acid in a second, but dominance and epistatic effects involving dominance were of no importance in fatty‐acid inheritance. It should be possible to breed oat genotypes with high or low levels of either saturated or unsaturated fatty acids in the groat oil. The importance of additive gene action implies that desired allelic combinations from these matings could be obtained in pureline cultivars.