Premium
Heritability of Resistance to Seed Shattering in Kleingrass
Author(s) -
Young Bruce A.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
crop science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.76
H-Index - 147
eISSN - 1435-0653
pISSN - 0011-183X
DOI - 10.2135/cropsci1991.0011183x003100050015x
Subject(s) - heritability , biology , germplasm , agronomy , horticulture , genetics
Seed shattering and nonuniformity of seed ripening in kleingrass, Panicum coloratum (L.), reduce the quantity of harvestable seed and contribute to diminished seed quality. In this study two populations were derived from an accession of kleingrass (PI 410177) that has superior seed retention. The objective was to determine the heritability of seed retention and the feasibility of developing improved germplasm from these populations. Variation for seed retention (SR) was demonstrated in these populations using a laboratory procedure for measuring SR. Calms were excised from field‐grown plants after pollination, placed in water, and brought to a greenhouse to allow the seed to mature. After 35 d the intlorescences were uniformly agitated and the degree of SR determined. The heritability of SR was measured using parent‐offspring regression. Narrow‐sense heritabilities were similar and low in both populations (0.38 and 0.40), and genotype ✕ environment interactions were a large component of the total variation. This suggests that improvement of seed shattering resistance will be slow and will require replicated testing in multiple environments per cycle of recurrent selection.