Genetic analysis of nutritional and antioxidant traits in eggplant (S. melongena)

Abstract

Six generations of eggplants (P1, P2, F1, F2, BC1 and BC2) obtained from two crosses SM001-07 x ST004-03 and SM001-07 x San005-01 were grown in an open field using Randomized complete Block Design with four replications. The experiment was conducted to determine gene effects for the inheritance of twelve nutritional and antioxidant traits in eggplant using generation mean analysis. The analysis of variance showed significant differences for most traits indicating the presence of sufficient variation in the eggplant materials under study. Additive-dominance effect was adequate to demonstrate the genetic variation and its significance in the inheritance of protein and magnesium contents, while non-allelic interactions were observed to be important for iron, zinc and total phenol in both crosses. The study also showed low values for dominance and environmental variances that resulted in high heritability values for most traits. Therefore, to improve these traits population improvement approaches (recurrent selection or pure line) followed by delayed selection in segregating generation would yield better results.