Evaluation of General and Specific Combining Ability for Doubled Haploid Lines in Sweet Pepper (Capsicum Annuum L.)

Abstract

Hybrid cultivars are commercially and economically important; hence, too much effort needed to improve the quality and quantity of hybrids. In this research project, general (GCA) and specific (SCA) combining ability of 32 doubled haploid (DH) lines of sweet pepper produced via microspore embryogenesis were evaluated. The DH lines were crossed with the top cross parent as the tester to evaluate general combining ability (GCA). Traits including morphological and yield-related characteristics to assess the general combining ability of lines were recorded and analyzed. The half-diallel mating crosses were performed using GCA based on the selected seven DH lines for SCA evaluation. Mean squares of GCA and SCA values were highly significant for most of the characters. DH55 line indicated the highest positive GCA for average yield per plant, moreover, the highest positive SCA was obtained for 55×64 hybrid. The ratio of \(\frac{MS \left(GCA\right)}{MS \left(SCA\right)}\) showed the non-additive gene actions in controlling all traits except fruit width and length and seed fresh weight. According to the results of specific combining ability of DH lines, four F1 hybrids were selected for new cultivar registration. The results obtained in the present study are applicable to release new F1- hybrids, which can be more reliable than those hybrids introduced by conventional selfing programs in sweet pepper due to 100% genetic purity of DH lines.

Assessing Combining Ability of Diverse Chili Pepper Genotypes to Develop High Yield and Quality Adopted Hybrids Under Egyptian Conditions

“…On the other hand, the ability of improving fruit wall thickness through the current breeding program was moderate. That's maybe due to the selection of the prenatal genotypes was depending on the characters of yield, earliness, and fruit characters (Rathva et al,;Bayati et al, 2022). In accordance with the current investigation (Thilak et al, 2019) reported that the parents were found to be the best general combiner.…”