Scientia Horticulturae 159 (2013) 72–79 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Scientia Horticulturae journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scihorti Heterosis in different F 1 Capsicum annuum genotypes for fruit traits, ascorbic acid, capsaicin, and flavonoids Justin D. Butcher a , Kevin M. Crosby a,∗ , Kil Sun Yoo a , Bhimanagouda Patil a , John L. Jifon b , William L. Rooney c a Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center, Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77845, USA b Vegetable and Fruit Improvement Center, Department of Horticultural Sciences, Texas AgriLife Research Center, 2415 E. Highway 83, Weslaco, TX 78596, USA c Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Foundation Seed Building, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2474, USA article info Article history: Received 6 June 2012 Received in revised form 13 March 2013 Accepted 21 March 2013 Keywords: Broad sense heritability High-parent heterosis Mid-parent heterosis Peppers Phytochemicals Repeatability abstract Genetic diversity is present in the Capsicum genus for fruit size, shape, color, length, firmness, flavor, and even concentrations of different phytochemicals. Our goal in this study was to gain a better under- standing of the relative ease of incorporating these characteristics into an improved cultivar evaluating a combination of 29 F 1 paprika and serrano pepper (Capsicum annuum) hybrids along with 19 of their respective parents. Genotypes were grown and evaluated at the Texas AgriLife Research Center in Wes- laco in the spring of 2008. Results confirmed our hypotheses that paprika type material have higher ascorbic acid (AA) and flavonoid (quercetin and luteolin) concentrations, while serrano peppers have higher expression of capsaicinoids (capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin). We were also able to identify how productive certain hybrid combinations were at expressing a significant amount of positive heterosis for particular traits. From our Pearson’s correlation analyses, we were able to identify the existence of a sig- nificant association between such comparisons as fruit weight with fruit diameter, fruit weight with fruit length, and fruit diameter with fruit length. Interestingly, we were also able to identify the presence of a significant association between such comparisons as ascorbic acid with fruit weight, ascorbic acid with fruit length, ascorbic acid with fruit diameter, total flavonoids with fruit weight, and total flavonoids with fruit length. This information, henceforth, allowed us to acknowledge the amount of variability present between these comparisons. In all, our results were able to reveal how effective certain combinations of parent material are toward production of F 1 offspring exhibiting improved fruit traits and elevated phytochemical concentrations. Ideally, these results will serve as benchmarks for breeders interested in development of improved lines for these traits. © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. 1. Introduction Development of improved pepper germplasm by cross-breeding two superior individuals can result in creation of a desirable F 1 offspring (Greenleaf, 1986; Pickersgill, 1997; Zatykó, 2006) whose expression of improved characteristics being the result, usually, of the specific gene interaction involved (Allard, 1960; Bernardo, 2002; Poehlman and Sleper, 1995; Zatykó, 2006). Due to consumer preference changing to larger pepper genotypes, results from previous studies reiterate how opportunistic and pertinent the existence of a significant amount of positive het- erosis can be for such traits as fruit weight, fruit width, and fruit length (Bhagyalakshmi et al., 1991; Gopalakrishnan et al., 1987; Prasath and Ponnuswami, 2008; Reddy et al., 2008). Equally as ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 979 845 0664; fax: +1 979 845 2337. E-mail address: k-crosby@agtamu.edu (K.M. Crosby). valuable are reports of high heritability values that have been reported for fruit length, fruit weight (Manju and Sreelathakumary, 2002; Sreelathakumary and Rajamony, 2004), and pericarp thick- ness (do Rego et al., 2011; Jabeen et al., 1999; Sood et al., 2009; Yadeta et al., 2011). do Rego et al. (2011) found heri- tability values in the broad sense for the aforementioned traits to be 99.1%, 97.3%, and 88.9%, respectively. Reports from do Rego et al. (2009) also found positively significant general com- bining ability (GCA) and specific combining ability (SCA) values for fruit weight, fruit width, fruit length, and pericarp thick- ness. Although each parent selected for a particular crossing scheme has potential to contribute desirable traits to its off- spring, most pepper breeders want to have a more detailed, scientific understanding of the inheritance or heritability poten- tial for expression of these characteristics of interest. This will allow breeders to more effectively exploit parental lines to produce superior hybrids expressing enhanced attributes in a more timely fashion. 0304-4238/$ – see front matter © 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2013.03.022