Inheritance and Association of Six Traits in Safflower¹

Abstract

The parents, F1 and F2 from four crosses of safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L. and C. palaestinus Eig.) were studied in field experiments. Data were taken on individual plants to estimate heritability, gene action, and mode of inheritance of plant height, time of flowering (TF), time to maturity (TM), time from flowering to maturity (TFM), leaf length, and stem diameter. In all crosses, F2 variability was largely genetic for all traits. Gene action was additive for plant height and leaf length, but nonadditive for TF, TM, and TFM. Gene action for stem diameter was additive in Cross 3 but nonadditive in Cross 4. The broad‐sense heritability estimates were high for all traits studied. Maternal effects were absent, except for TM and leaf length. In all F2's, continuous distributions were observed, suggesting multiple‐factor inheritance for plant height, TF, TM, TFM, leaf length, and stem diameter. Heritability estimates in the narrow sense for TF and plant height, calculated from the cross N4051 ✕ 830293, were 11 and 79%, respectively. In the same cross, the values for expected genetic advance for TF and plant height were 0.70 and 17.0%, respectively. On the basis of apparent gene action, heritability estimates and expected genetic advance, direct selection to improve plant height should be effective.Plant height was not associated with striped hull or flower color; however, plant height was associated with anthocyanin pigmentation. Also, TF was not associated with striped hull, anthocyanin pigmentation, or flower color. Correlation coefficients of TF with TM and TM with TFM were high.

Patterns of Phenotypic Variation in a Germplasm Collection of Carthamus tinctorius L. from the Middle East

“…There were significant differences among variants of plant height (i.e., short, medium and tall) in rosette period and days to maturity. However, plant height as a quantitative trait varied tremendously among variants of eight qualitative traits (Table 2), including four traits reported by Kotecha (1979) and by Johnson et al (2001).…”

“…It can be postulated (e.g., Abebe and Bjornstad 1996;Alemayehu and Becker 2002) that selection pressure under domestication in safflower and other crop species could have been similar in different geographical regions, and resulted in larger within population diversity compared to diversity across regions. Plant height, being strongly associated with flowering (Johnson et al 2001) and with days to maturity, post-anthesis period and anthocyanin (Kotecha 1979) was highly variable (I ¼ 0.92) and ranged from 28 to 135 cm. There were significant differences among variants of plant height (i.e., short, medium and tall) in rosette period and days to maturity.…”

“…Duration of rosette period although genetically controlled (Kotecha 1979), is subjected to environmental factors, mainly temperature and daylength. The daylength-and temperature-insensitive accessions, identified earlier (Li and M€ undel 1996) in germplasm from the Middle East, have a high potential for wide geographic adaptation.…”

Path analysis of the relationships between seed yield and some morphological and phenological traits in safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.)

“…The relationships among some morphological and phenological traits have been determined in safflower (Ashri et al, 1974;Kotecha, 1979;Nie et al, 1987Nie et al, , 1993Pascual-Villalobos & Alburquerque, 1996). Prior research has determined that number of capitula/plant, number of seeds/capitulum, weight of seed and capitulum diameter are important yield components (Patil & Jadhav, 1977;Chaudhary, 1990;Prasad et al, 1993;Prasad & Agrawal, 1994;Pascual-Villalobos & Alburquerque, 1996;Omidi Tabrizi, 2000).…”

Inheritance of plant height in the dwarf mutant ‘Enana’ of safflower

“…Therefore, the proposed genotype for`Rancho' is d w d w and that for`Enana' D w D w . Kotecha (1979) studied plant height inheritance in crosses between C. tinctorius and the wild species Carthamus palaestinus Eig. The author found the trait to be quantitatively inherited, with additive gene action and no maternal eects.…”