Assessment of Fruit Quality and Fruit Morphology in Androgenic Pepper Lines (Capsicum annuum L.)

Anther or microspore culture induced haploid and double haploids (DH) are increasingly being utilized by breeders since it can shorten breeding time by achieving complete homozygosity within a single generation. Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) is one of the most important vegetables, distinguished by its high level of heterozygosity, making the breeding process very laborious and long. Fourteen different DH lines were obtained as a result of anther culture of four parental genotypes. Data from different plant and fruit morphological traits as well as quality traits including vitamin C, dry matter content, total polyphenols and antioxidant activity were collected. A total of 47 different descriptors for fruit morphology and color were characterized using Tomato Analyzer v. 3 software. Findings from this research revealed significant variation of fruit morphology, quality and productivity traits between DH lines and their respective parental genotypes. Among these studied 14 DH lines, 42.9% were superior to the parental genotypes for fruit weight, width, fruit wall thickness, and usable part of the fruits. As compared to parental genotypes, DH lines exhibited higher values for tested fruit quality traits and dry matter content. Multivariate analysis allowed us to identify the trait combination that contributed to the total variation. A total of eight principle components (PCs) explained 95.4% variation with PC1 and PC2 contributing 32.4% and 21.1%, respectively. Pepper androgenesis clearly indicates its usefulness as a well established technique that can allow pepper breeders to save the time and breeding resources by expediting the breeding process. Our research findings prove the advantages of pepper androgenesis to utilize the diversity of pepper genetic resources and development of novel pepper breeding lines to utilize in future breeding.