HERITABILITY AND GENETIC VARIANCE COMPONENTS FOR 20 FRUIT AND PLANT CHARACTERS IN THE CULTIVATED STRAWRERRY

Abstract

Heritability and genetic variance components for 20 fruit and plant characters were investigated in 64 progenies produced among 31 North American and 1 German strawberry clone under the crossing scheme similar to North Carolina Design II (Comstock and Robinson, 1952). The data were analyzed based on the assumption of random and/or mixed models of the parents. The estimation of the genetic variance components indicated that for more than half the 20 characters nonadditive variance (dominance + epistasis) constituted approximately 50% or more of the total genetic variance and that in most cases epistasis played an important role in the nonadditive variance. Heritability estimates were low (less than 18%) for total berry yield and some fruit quality characters such as firmness, easy capping, pH value, soluble solids, and external and internal appearances but were high (more than 37%) for a number of yield component characters such as average berry weight, berries/flower stalk, yield/flower stalk and flower stalk number, suggesting that substantial improvement in total berry yield could be achieved through selection on these yield components or a linear function of them.