General and Specific Combining Abilities for Flower Characters of Capsicum annuum L.

The study was carried out with the objective of estimating the combinatorial capacity of ornamental pepper (Capsicum. annuum L.) genotypes for flower traits, aiming to identify the best hybrids and the best parents for the synthesis of new populations. The experiment was conducted in a greenhouse in the Biotechnology Laboratory, Agrarian Center, Federal University of Paraíba (Laboratório de Biotecnologia Vegetal of Centro de Ciências Agrárias, Universidade Federal da Paraíba), State of Paraíba, Brazil. Seven accessions of Capsicum annuum were hand-crossed. Seven flower traits were evaluated including days for flowering, flower diameter, petal length, number of petals, number of stamens, anther length, and filament length. The diallel analysis using the Griffing method I of the data recorded showed that accessions 001, 004 and 099 were the best for flower characteristics based on their GCA values. There were significant reciprocal effects for days to flowering, filament length and anther length. The additive effects of the genes were predominant for most of the flower characteristics and the non-additive effects for the days for flowering only. Genotypes 001, 004 and 099 are indicated for crosses that aim to increase flower characteristics. In general, these genitors were involved in almost hybrids combinations with best SCA values. Those combinations should be used for to advance genarations in the breeding program. On the other hand, the best hybrids to be release for propagation were: 134 x 004, 137 x 001, 390 x 004, 77.3 x 099, 001 x 390, 001 x 77.3, and 099 x 77.3.