Diversity of Pepper (Capsicum spp.) Genotypes from Eritrea Assessed by Morphological Traits

Abstract

Diversity in plant genetic resources provides an opportunity for plant breeders to develop new and improved cultivars with desirable characteristics. The purpose of this study was to assess the diversity of Eritrean pepper germplasm in order to obtain information for improving it. A total of 60 pepper (Capsicum spp.) seed sample collections were obtained from farmers and institutions in Eritrea. The collections were evaluated at two sites located in two different agro-climatic regions of the country. The collections were assessed using 16 quantitative and 23 qualitative descriptors. A Randomized Complete Block Design was used for the evaluation. Quantitative and qualitative data of the two sites were subjected to Principal Component Analysis, Principal Coordinate Analysis, Hierarchal clustering, Analysis of variance and Correlation. The distribution of characters of the different quantitative and qualitative traits and the performance of the collections showed the existece of variable characters distributed among the collections indicating considerable diversity. For quantitative variables, the first three components were able to explain 61%, 58% and 67% of the total variation in Hamelmalo, Asmara and combined data of the two sites respectively. While for the qualitative variables the first three components were able to explain a variation of 58% in Hamelmalo, 49%, in Asmara and 55% combined data of the two sites. Phenological attributes and fruit characteristics were found to contribute more to the variation. The majority of the traits evaluated were significant and the highest Coefficient of Variation was related to fruit characteristics. The results of this study showed that there is sufficient variability within the Eritrean pepper genotypes that could be used in future breeding and crop improvement programs.

Genetic diversity studies for morphological traits of hot pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) genotypes in Central Zone of Tigray Region, Northern Ethiopia

“…Most yield and fruit characteristics contribute to PC1 such as fruit length (FL), fruit diameter (FD), fruit pericarp thickness (FPT), total fruit yield per hectare (TFY), marketable yield per hectare (MFY), average single fruit weight (FW), number of seed per fruit (NSF) and dry fruit yield per plant (DFYP) had more contribution to the total diversity and they were responsible for the differentiation of the seven clusters. The long vectors indicate that, they have a large contribution to the total variation (Saleh et al, 2016b).…”

Mapping distribution of Capsicum annum var. chinense in Tana Toraja and surrounding districts (Indonesia) based on fruit morphology

“…We reported a similar result that most of the colors of young fruit in Capsicum were dark green, green, and light green. The same study reported that the colors of ripe fruit in several genotype's of chili were red, bright red, and dark red (Saleh et al 2016). The fruit shape characters observed in 51 genotypes were blocky, campanulate, and triangular (Figure 5B, C, D).…”

Genetic diversity of maize accessions for maizelethal necrosis disease resistance

“…The diversity in plants provide an opportunity for developing new varieties and improved cultivars with desirable characteristics (Govindaraj et al, 2015;Saleh et al, 2016). A number of methodologies exist for the assessment of genetic diversity in maize, those are (i) morphological characterization (Ristic et al, 2014) (ii) biochemical characterization that uses electrophoresis to detect allelic variants of enzymes at gene level (Govindaraj et al, 2015) (iii) pedigree that employ the extraction of genealogical information (Drinic et al, 2012) and (iv) DNA molecular analyses (Sao et al, 2015) such as Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR), Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) (Mondini et al, 2009).…”