Inheritance of Soil Zinc Deficiency Symptoms in Pepper

The objective of the present study was to investigate the inheritance of tolerance to soil Zn-deficiency symptoms. The resistant line “Alata 21A” (C. annuum ) was crossed with the Capsicum frutescens PI 281420. The F1 was both backcrossed to Alata 21A (BC 1 P 1 ) and PI 281420 (BC 1 P 2 ), advanced to F 2 and F 3 . The parents, BC 1 P 1 , BC 1 P 2 , F 2 populations (206 and 455 plants) and F 2:3 (1310 plants) were grown in pots filled with zinc-deficient soils under greenhouse conditions from 2011 to 2013. Plants were scored for Zinc deficiency symptoms in three-day-intervals for three weeks. Segregation was skewed towards resistance. The number of genes that controls the trait was estimated to be 1.4. The mode of segregation indicated that dominant epistasis with 12 : 3 : 1 ratio explains the trait in two independent tests using F 2 population ( X 2 = 0.94, P = 0.625, N = 206; X 2 = 1,7, P = 0.79, N = 455). Broad and narrow sense heritability were estimated to be 0.91 and 0.25, respectively. Results showed that soil zinc-deficiency-tolerant genotypes could be developed via backcross breeding with Alata 21A as the source for cultivated pepper.