S02 - Session P4 - Biodiversity of hot pepper germplasm collection from Vegetable Research Development Station Buzau, Romania

Authors: Ovidia Agapie *, Elena Barcanu, Costel Vinatoru, Bianca Tanase, Ion Gherase, Florin Stanica

Biodiversity is threatened by environmental factors like climate change, global demand for food and inadequate exploitation of the genetic resources. As a result, it has recorded a great loss of biodiversity for many species. Of this reason, one of the most important strategies for plant breeding programs is accessing genetic and phenotypic variability and also creating measures to preserve existing genetic resources. In order to make the accessions of a Capsicum germplasm collection available for use in improving characteristics and launching new cultivars, they should be properly described and evaluated. In this study, we describe the characterization of 204 hot pepper accessions from Capsicum spp. germplasm collection of Vegetable Research Development Station Buzau, Romania. For two consecutive years the germplasm collection was evaluated from agro-morphologic and biochemical point of view. Based on the analysed traits, we performed principal component analysis followed by hierarchical agglomerative clustering in order to establish affinities between the accessions. The resulting dendrogram has divided the germplasm collection into three main clusters (C1, C2, C3). C1 contains 81 accessions, most of them with triangular fruit shape, with an average weight of 10.47 grams and with a high total soluble content varying from 7.05 to 10.39░Brix. Cluster 2 is the largest group, with 102 accessions. In this category are framed accessions with small fruits, weighing, on average, 3.78 grams. The fruit firmness and total soluble content is also low, in both maturity stages. Cluster 3 contains 20 accessions with high yields and long shaped fruits. The fruit firmness had the highest values, varying from 13.97 N to 26.39 N. Our results are showing a great variability within the studied germplasm collection and the most important traits might be used in future breeding programs.