Study on inheritance of seed technological characteristics in sugar beet

Abstract

Seed is an important input in production of field crops. The successful production of sugar from sugar beet depends on high yielding varieties, optimum plant establishment after sowing and good agricultural practices. Therefore, seed with the highest germination ability and vigour is necessary to ensure an early and high level of field emergence. Knowledge of the genetic control of seed characters may help breeders to efficiently select for improved germination. In this research, variance components and inheritance of sugar beet seed characteristics were studied. Five monogerm diploid O-Type lines were crossed with 15 monogerm, diploid cytoplasmic male sterile (CMS) lines on the basis of North Carolina Design II (Factorial Design), and 75 F1 hybrids (single crosses) were produced. The hybrids were then compared in three completely randomized designs of 25 entries each. Eight seed traits of F1 hybrids were evaluated in the laboratory in three replications. Based on genetic analysis, the additive variance for rootlet length, hypocotyle length, uniformity of germination and 1,000-germ weight was significant at 5% probability level. Also, the dominance variance was significant at 1% probability level for all the seed traits measured except for germination percentage. Narrow-sense heritabilities of rootlet and hypocotyle lengths were significant at 5% probability level. Correlation analysis showed that germination speed and hypocotyle length were positively and negatively correlated with germination uniformity, respectively, at 1% probability level. These results indicated that there was a remarkable genetic variation for the seed traits which could be exploited by selection and heterosis breeding.