Genetics of Fertility Restoration in Cytoplasmic Male Sterile Pepper

Pepper hybrid seeds production using male sterility could lower cost by reducing time and labour, and increase the genetic purity of the F1 seeds. To investigate the genetics of fertility restoration of the Peterson cytoplasmic sterility in pepper, a doubled haploid population of 115 pepper lines obtained from anther culture of the F1 hybrid between Yolo Wonder (sterility maintainer line) and Perennial (fertility restorer line) and the parental lines were test-crossed by 77013A (a strict cytoplasmic-genic male sterile line). The fertility of the test-crossed lines was assessed in greenhouse and open field with the following three criteria: pollen index (PI, visual estimation of pollen amount per flower), pollen number (PN, pollen counting under microscope), and seed number (SN, the number of seeds per fruit in open pollination). Correlations between the each couple of criteria within, as well as between the cultivation methods ranged from 0.55 to 0.84. Analysis of variance showed that the genotype (DH line) and environment were the significant sources of variation of the fertility. Narrow sense of heritance of fertility restoration ranged from 0.38 to 0.92, depending on the criteria and environment. The distribution of the progeny was continuous between the parental genotypes indicating the quantitative inheritance of fertility restoration. Inferred from segregation according to Snape et al.(1984), the number of segregating genes was estimated to be that three to four genetic factors were involved in pollen traits (PI and PN) and five to eight genetic factors in seed production (SN). The heredity analysis of the CMS will be helpful for understanding of the genetic mechanism of the fertility restoration and the exploitation of the CMS in hybrid seed production.