Epistasis and inheritance of yield contributing traits in Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.)

Abstract

The generation mean analysis for yield contributing traits involving six generations (P1, P2, F1, F2, BC1P1 and BC1P2) was undertaken to study the nature and magnitude of gene effects in Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.). The significance of individual scaling test and three parameter genetic model revealed the existence of epistasis and indicated the importance of additive[d], dominance [h] and other three types of non-allelic gene interactions i.e. additive × additive [i], additive × dominance [j] and dominance × dominance [l] for five characters viz., plant height (cm), plant canopy width (cm), fruit length (cm), fruit width (cm) and fruit weight (g). The results suggested the presence of duplicate type of epistasis for most of the traits studied indicating that selection for improvement may be successful in later generations of segregating populations. In view of these results, the implementation of population improvement technique such as reciprocal recurrent selection will be more effective with high potential in Chilli.