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Five cycles of recurrent selection for increased essential oil content in East Indian lemongrass: response to selection, and effects on heritabilities of traits and intertrait correlations
Author(s) -
Kulkarni R. N.,
Baskaran K.,
Ramesh S.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
plant breeding
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.583
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1439-0523
pISSN - 0179-9541
DOI - 10.1046/j.1439-0523.2003.00785.x
Subject(s) - citral , essential oil , biology , heritability , tiller (botany) , dry matter , selection (genetic algorithm) , horticulture , botany , artificial intelligence , computer science , genetics
Five cycles of phenotypic recurrent selection for increased essential oil content were carried out in East Indian lemongrass, Cymbopogon flexuosus. In each cycle, the top 5% of plants for essential oil content were selected and their ramets were planted in isolated polycross blocks to produce the seed of the next cycle. Response to selection for essential oil content and its effect on three unselected traits, leaf yield, dry matter content in leaves and citral content in the essential oil, were determined by evaluating C 0 ‐C 5 populations in a replicated trial. Genetic variation, heritability estimates and intertrait correlations for essential oil content, leaf yield, leaf width, tiller number and citral content in the essential oil in C 4 were determined, by evaluating 40 clones and their half‐sib progenies produced from 40 randomly selected C 4 plants, in a replicated experiment. These were compared with those determined in C 0 earlier. The mean essential oil content increased from 0.66% in C 0 to 1.67% in C 5 (i.e. by about 31% per cycle over C 0 ). Selection for essential oil content did not affect leaf yield and its effect on dry matter content in leaves was marginal. The first three cycles of selection for essential oil content did not affect citral content in the oil but two further cycles significantly decreased citral content. Heritabilities and intertrait correlations between all traits studied, except citral content and essential oil content, were similar to those found in C 0 .