Genetic inheritance of proportion of pod walls and other yield components in white lupin

Abstract

The present study was conducted toinvestigate the genetic inheritance of podcomponents in spring-sown white lupin. Ananalysis of the genetic parameters ofproportion of pod walls and related podcomponents should be helpful to define aselection strategy in the future lupinbreeding programs. Two mating designs wereused, a complete diallel, and a halfdiallel, without reciprocals and withoutselfing. The parental lines covered therange of genetic variation for theproportion of the pod walls available inthe white lupin collection from INRA,France. Diallel analyses were carried outvia Griffing (model I and II) andHayman methods. Proportion of pod walls,seed weight per pod and mean seed weightshowed a mainly additive inheritance.Narrow sense heritability was higher forthe proportion of pod walls than for theother pod components. The correlationbetween general combining ability (GCA) andparental phenotypic values was high forproportion of pod walls. This suggestedthat mean parental performance could be auseful indicator of mean cross performancefor the proportion of pod walls in whitelupin. For pure line breeding, theestimates of GCA values showed thatEgyptian accessions would be valuableparents. Breeding for reduced proportion ofpod walls may be a way of improving seedyield.