Effect of Pepper Types on Obtaining Spontaneous Doubled Haploid Plants via Anther Culture

Abstract

The most successful technique used to obtain haploid plant in pepper is anther culture. The chromosome content of haploid plants can be doubled spontaneously or using colchicine. In this study, we compared the rate of spontaneous doubled haploidy of different pepper types. Seven charleston, six bell, eight capia, and seven green pepper genotypes were used as plant material. Murashige and Skoog (MS) nutrient medium with 4 mg·L−1 naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), 0.5 mg·L−1 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP), 0.25% activated charcoal, 30 g·L−1 sucrose, and 15 mg·L−1 silver nitrate (AgNO3) was used. Ploidy levels of plants obtained through anther culture were detected using both flow cytometry and simple sequence repeats (SSR) markers. The results showed that different spontaneous doubled haploidy rates were obtained from different pepper types. The highest rate was observed in bell pepper type with 53.4% (mean of six genotypes) of haploid plants undergoing spontaneous chromosome doubling. This was followed by charleston and capia types with 31.9% and 30.4% doubling, respectively. Green pepper type gave the lowest spontaneous doubled haploidy rate with 22.2% doubling. The results obtained from this study will be useful both for future work on haploidy in pepper and for breeding programs.