STUDIES REGARDING THE VARIABILITY OF THE PLANT PRODUCTIVITY CHARACTERS OF THE BELL PEPPER (CAPSICUM ANNUUM VAR. TETRAGONUM)

The study tracked the evaluation of the characters that contribute to the plant production in a collection of bell pepper genotypes. The experimentation was done in field, under the usual technological conditions. The data collected by biometric measurements were statistically interpreted by variance analysis and by the setting of the selection indices (S, h2, ΔG). The biological material consisted of 20 landraces collected from the West of Romania. Most populations are similar to Globus variety in terms of fruit size. The Tomnatic II population is remarkable with many and small fruits, but also the Apateu I and Cenad populations which have the fruit weight on the plant significantly higher. For the fruit weight, the differences between the populations may be up to about 100 g (Şimian), which has the greatest heritability (0.83). In most populations, the heritability of this character is less than 0.50. The number of fruit per plant is influenced by environmental factors, but the expected genetic progress can be up to 5.98 fruit (Tomnatic II). The most common values are between 2 and 3 fruits. For the number of fruit per plant, few populations have a heritability of more than 0.50. The fruit weight on the plant can be improved by selection with a progress ranging from 21.43 g (Tomnatic I) to 340.73 g (Valcani). The heritability of this character is over 0.60 for nine populations. Considering these indices, the collected material is valuable for the selection process, but the selection must be longer. The studied populations of bell peppers are an important reservoir of genes for the breeding process, the variability of morphological characters being satisfactory