Selection of promising lines for yield and quality traits in advanced segregating generation of linseed

Abstract

Linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) is becoming more important due to its unique nutrient profile and a source of high‐added value raw material, for both food and industrial uses. However, low productivity and lack of combined quality traits has limited its cultivation and there is an urgent need to develop improved varieties through genetic recombination of traits. In this respect 96 linseed F4 families, derived from eight contrasting parents were field evaluated during 2019–2020. A reasonable diversity among the F4 families indicated a considerable potential for improving linseed for agronomic and quality traits. Results demonstrated that strict selection for oil content, protein content, fatty acid composition and amino acid profile, with comparatively high heritability and genetic advance, is feasible and successful in F4 generation. Families with linolenic acid content as low as 9.26% and as high as 72.46% were identified. Yellow‐seeded families had higher values of phenological traits, plant height and number of capsules and lower values of seed number, linolenic acid, palmitic acid, stearic acid, aspartic acid, leucine and lysine content than the brown‐seeded types. Among the many low linolenic acid families identified those with superior yield and quality traits, offer opportunitiesfor development of new varieties that may be of high value in food industry. Also the high linolenic acid and high oil content families recognized may have genetic potentials for development of new varieties of linseed for industrial purposes. Among the parental genotypes four were found to be promising for developing superior high yielding linseeds with high quality.