Morphoagronomic characterization of 49 Capsicum sp. accessions for breeding selection purposes

Chile has a developing vegetable processing industry that is beginning to understand that specific cultivars are needed to meet their agribusiness requirements, but no local cultivars have been developed. A breeding program needs variability within its germplasm to make progress. In this study, 49 Capsicum sp. accessions from the INIA La Platina Vegetable Germplasm Bank were characterized morphoagronomically. The germplasm evaluation was performed based on a minimum of ten plants per accession that were randomly chosen. Twelve quantitative and four qualitative descriptors were evaluated according to the IPGRI, AVRDC, and CATIE (1995) Capsicum manual. The values of central tendency and dispersion showed variation coefficients greater than 25% for fruit quantitative descriptors. The descriptors fruiting period, cultivation period, soluble solids, and dry matter had lower variation coefficients. A principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis were performed. These analyses allowed the accessions to be grouped based mainly on fruit descriptors, but also on agroindustrial descriptors such as plant height and cropping period. The PCA and the conglomerates showed similar groups. Germplasm characterization confirmed the existence of germplasm variability, especially with the fruit quantitative descriptors.