Morphological characterization and screening of Impatiens wild species for heat tolerance

Abstract

Impatiens sp. is an annual plant that flowers all year round. High temperature stress is a major challenge limiting crop productivity. The research was conducted at experiment garden in Palasari Cipanas, BRIN, Indonesia, at an altitude of 1000 ASL, from January - April 2023. The aim of the research was to explore the morphological variation of Impatiens wild species and to obtain some heat tolerance accession for next breeding program. Twenty nine accession of Impatiens were observed for the qualitative and quantitative data including the evaluation of heat tolerance. Twelve qualitative characters were recorded. The qualitative characters were analyzed as degree of similarity. DICE Similarity coefficient of qualitative data was 0.06. Broad variability in the genotypic, phenotypic variances and genetic advance was found for leaf length, leaf width and heat tolerance score. Of the electrolyte leakage analyses, it was found that flower length, ventral petal length width, lateral petal length and spur length positively support the high tolerance of Impatiens accession to heat stress. The darker color of the stem, anther, and bract is followed by a reduction in the dimension of flower width, lateral petal width, dorsal petal width and spur length but the increased leaf thicknesses. There was no direct correlation between the heat tolerance score and the leaf thickness. The largest data diversity explained by 3 factors with a total variance of 68.88 %.