Genetic Dissimilarity Between Lettuce Genotypes With Different Levels of Carotenoids Biofortification

Abstract

Vegetables with high carotenoids content can help to prevent many diseases. Lettuce is one of the most consumed vegetables all over the world that present potential for biofortification investment. However, there are few genotypes of lettuce biofortificated on the market and for direct use in plant breeding. Evaluate new lettuce genotypes that are rich in carotenoids are essential in order to know the commercial potential and their usefulness as possible parents in breeding programs. Therefore, the experiment aimed to evaluate the agronomic potential and genetic dissimilarity between lettuce genotypes with different levels of carotenoids. It was conducted in a randomized block design, with 83 treatments and two replications. During the course of the trial, were evaluated quantitative characters: leaf chlorophyll content (a, b and total), canopy diameter and number of leaves; and qualitative characters: size, color and shape of the leaves. The genetic diversity was obtained by multivariate analyzes using the sum of quantitative and qualitative data and, after that, using different grouping methods (UPGMA and Tocher). The genotypes showed genetic dissimilarity and agronomic potential for different lettuce segments and high carotenoids content. Among the evaluated characters, total chlorophyll content represented the main contribution for genetic variability. There was no coherence between the hierarchical method of UPGMA and the optimization method of Tocher when used for determinate the genetic diversity between lettuce genotypes with different levels of carotenoids.

Nutritional Characterization Based on Vegetation Indices to Detect Anthocyanins, Carotenoids, and Chlorophylls in Mini-Lettuce

“…This genotype is classified as red but showed anthocyanin content statistically equivalent to that of green genotypes. The behavior of this genotype can be explained by the expression of red and green colors simultaneously in the leaves of the plant (variegate leaves) [55]. This result is in agreement with the fact that anthocyanin is the pigment that gives a red color to leaves [12,15,32,56].…”

Comparison between non-parametric indexes in the selection of biofortified curly lettuce

“…Few researches have been conducted into the biofortified lettuce (Cassetari et al, 2015;Jacinto et al, 2019;Silveira et al, 2019;Sousa et al, 2019). One of the main obstacles is to feasibly get an individual with both good agronomic traits and high level of carotenoids (Maciel et al, 2019a).…”

Reaction of biofortified lettuce genotypes to different strains of Xanthomonas campestris pv. vitians

“…In addition to the benefits provided to human health, such as the prevention of diseases related to oxidative stress (ROCHA; REED, 2014), lettuce is also an important source of carotenoid precursors of vitamin A (CASSETARI et al, 2015;OLIVEIRA et al, 2019). It is a biofortified food that can be used as an alternative to reduce the risk of deficiency (SILVEIRA et al, 2019). Despite the nutritional potential of lettuce, there has been a significant increase in disease incidence in the vegetable, making its cultivation unsustainable.…”