Selection of basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) full-sib families from diverse landraces

Abstract

Basil (Ocimum basilicum L.) is one of the most important culinary and aromatic plants in Iran. Surprisingly, no commercial cultivar is available across the country and farmers are cultivating landraces. The main purpose of the present study was to describe the diversity among and within landraces of sweet basil as well as developing new genotypes for cultivar development. Twenty two genotypes of basil including Iranian landraces and international cultivars were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with three replications in 2017. Three Iranian landraces, ‘Isfahan3’, ‘Birjand’ and ‘Malayer’ were recognized as superior landraces. Dry herb for them was recorded as 3309, 3191 and 3175 kg ha−1, respectively. Also, the content of essential oil in ‘Isfahan3’, ‘Birjand’ and ‘Malayer’ was obtained as 1.43, 1.85, and 1.79% (w/w on dry weight basis), respectively. Due to existence of high diversity among landraces, broad-sense heritability estimates were over 98% for all of the evaluated traits. Among these landraces, 14 full-sib families were produced via controlled pollination. In another experiment the full-sib families were compared. For all measured traits, there were highly significant differences among full-sib families. The best family in each landrace was selected for cultivar development in future breeding programs.