Interrelationships between yield and its components in hot pepper (Capsicum chinense Jacq.)

Abstract

Capsicum chinense Jacq. (hot pepper) plays a pivotal role in imparting pungency and flavor to Caribbean cuisines and is an important cash crop with considerable local demand and export potential. Hot pepper production in the region has declined over the years due to high cost of production, inability to compete in international markets and poor profitability. The cultivation of uncharacterised low yielding land races (12-20 t/ha) is regarded as one of the important constraints. The objective of the study was to determine the genetic diversity for yield and its components in C. chinense and interrelationships between them. Two field experiments, first involving 86 accessions and the second with a subset of 22 promising accessions from the 86, were each carried out in a randomised complete block design with three replications. In addition to yield, fruit number, clusters per plant, fruits per cluster, average fruit weight, flowers per node and reproductive efficiency as well as total dry weight, shoot dry weight and harvest index were recorded over 14 harvests. The study showed considerable genetic diversity for all characters except flowers per node, with fruit number, clusters per plant and shoot dry weight recording very high genotypic coefficients of variation and repeatability. Correlation analysis revealed that the important yield attributing characters were fruit number or clusters per plant and average fruit weight. A number of promising accessions have been identified for hot pepper production. The implications of the use of yield and partitioning components in breeding for yield is discussed.