Segregation in F2 Population, Heritability and Correlation of Agronomic Traits and Oil Content in Sesame

Abstract

Sesame breeding to increase oil content and maintain acceptable agronomic traits is important to Thailand’s agriculture. The objectives of this study were to evaluate segregation, broad sense heritability and phenotypic correlation on agronomic traits and oil content in F2 population of KKU 1 x C-plus 2 and Mahasarakham 60 x Kanchanaburi. This study was carried out at Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Kalasin University. The agronomic traits of individual plant selected were recorded and oil content was analyzed.
The results showed that F2 population of both crosses demonstrated continuous segregation for agronomic traits and oil content. The genetics of parent used affected the oil content distribution of F2 population. The F2 population that came from crossing between high oil content cultivars tend to have higher number of individual plants with high oil content than those coming from crossing between low oil content cultivars. The twenty-five breeding lines of KKU 1 x C-plus 2 and the twenty-seven breeding lines of Mahasarakham
60 x Kanchanaburi were chosen by their good agronomic traits and high oil content for continued selection in F3 population. Heritability of agronomic traits and yield were low while heritability of oil content was moderate to relatively high. Significant positive correlation coefficients were found between oil content with branch/plant, length of capsule and yield/plant in KKU1 x C-plus 2. In contrast, correlation between oil content and agronomic traits for Mahasarakham 60 x Kanchanaburi in F2 population was not found.