Genetic diversity and association analysis for different morphological traits in Capsicum annuum L.

Capsicum annuum L. is the extensively cultivated species of peppers (chilies) in all over the world. Its fruits are used for spiciness (capsaicin) and color (capsanthin) in our daily foods. Pakistan is the leading chili consuming country. Genetic divergence among 25 accessions (local and exotic) collected from Ayub Agriculture Research Institute (AARI) Faisalabad, Pakistanwas estimated from the data collected during the year 2014 in the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan for different morphological and growth parameters viz fruit width, fruit length, peduncle length, number of primary branches, inter nodal length, plant height, seed index, 1000 seed weight, fresh and dry fruit weight, pericarp thickness, leaf area and seeds per fruit. Based on this characterization the plants were grouped into 5 clusters and diversity among accessions was indicated by the wide range of D2 values whereas phenotypic correlation for all the characters was found significant. Five components were selected as principle components with Eigen values > 1. These components exhibited 77.2% of the variation. The first principal component (PC I) explained 27.2% of total variation in original data, second component (PC II) explained 18.9%, and third principal component (PC III) explained 12.5% of variation. The other principal components (PC IV and PC V explained an additional 18.6% of the variation (a total 77.2% of explained variation. Accessions with distinct identity were marked, which are likely to be quite suitable for breeding through hybridization by combining desirable traits. High estimates of broad sense heritability (90%) for all the characters except peduncle length predicted that selection could be awarding in late segregating generations and above accessions could be utilized in hybridization programme for C. annuum crop improvement. Published by the International Journal of Biomolecules and Biomedicine (IJBB