Heritability of drought resistance in Solanum aethiopicum Shum group and combining ability of genotypes for drought tolerance and recovery
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Date
2018
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Scientia Horticulturae
Abstract
Drought tolerance is a complex trait whose inheritance had not been investigated in Solanum aethiopicum L.
Shum group. This is partly because of perceived cross incompatibilities in the crop. This study relied on 24
successful crosses from an incomplete 9×4 North Carolina II mating design, evaluated under five watering
conditions based on plant growth stage and watering level in order to determine the heritability of drought
resistance and combining ability. Subsequent data analyses were based on restricted maximum likelihood.
Overall, specific combining ability (SCA) effects were significant across and within watering environments for all
study traits. The most highly heritable traits (in the narrow-sense) were identified as leaves per plant, chlorophyll
content (CHL), leaf fresh yield and leaf dry yield while leaf area (LA), leaf relative water content (LRWC)
and leaf mass area (LMA) were least heritable. However, the broad sense heritability (H2) was over 0.80 for
seven of the traits, indicating that dominance gene action surpass additive gene effects for drought resistance in
S. aethiopicum Shum. Further analysis showed that LA is suited for selection of best combiners under wellwatered
and drought-stress (DS) treatments. The LRWC served best in separating the SCA effects of crosses under
DS. The CHL produced clear separations of SCA effects under both DS and drought recovery while LMA served
best under the latter.
Description
Keywords
Specific combining ability, Optimum watering, Drought tolerance mechanisms, Breeding traits, Hybridization, African eggplant
Citation
Sseremba, G., Tongoona, P., Eleblu, J., Danquah, E. Y., & Kizito, E. B. (2018). Heritability of drought resistance in Solanum aethiopicum Shum group and combining ability of genotypes for drought tolerance and recovery. Scientia Horticulturae, 240, 213-220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2018.06.028