Correlations among New Mexico pod‐type green chile (Capsicum annuum) fruit morphology characteristics with destemming force

Abstract

AbstractDestemming refers to the removal of the calyx and pedicel from chile (Capsicum annuum) fruit, and destemming force is the amount of force required to accomplish this removal. The objective of this study was to describe the relationship between destemming force and fruit width, fruit length, and pericarp thickness, along with the genetic potential for combining the easy‐destemming attribute with the preferred fruit morphology of New Mexico (NM) pod‐type green chile. This investigation will define optimal selection criteria for reducing destemming force, while preserving the distinctive morphology of NM pod‐type green chile. We quantified phenotypic and genetic variation of 285 F3 families from three populations developed from reciprocal crosses between three NM pod‐type cultivars and an easy‐destemming cultivar. The results show destemming force exhibited significant positive phenotypic correlations with pericarp thickness and fruit width (0.90 and 0.92, respectively) and fruit length (0.69). Genetic correlations for each of the three populations for fruit morphological traits ranged from 0.2 to 0.9, with pericarp thickness with the highest genetic correlation with destemming force. Narrow‐sense heritability values were between 0.2 and 0.8, with destemming force and fruit length consistently having higher narrow‐sense heritability values. These findings suggest a correlation between the expression of pericarp thickness and destemming force. The lower estimates for pericarp thickness indicate environmental influences may play a more significant role in determining trait expression. The information generated from this study will aid in the development of efficient cultivars suited for mechanical harvesting in NM pod‐type breeding programs.