Variability in reproductive traits in Jatropha curcas L. accessions during early developmental stages under warm subtropical conditions

Abstract

Variability in floral, fruit, and seed characteristics, and oil content of 15 accession of Jatropha curcas during early development were assessed during two flowering periods in south Florida subtropical climate. The two flowering periods had leaf flushing in March. Field evaluation using 18 quantitative traits showed significant variation among accessions. The number of female flowers and female : male flower ratio ranged from 1 to 15 and 1 : 8.8 to 1 : 67.8, respectively. Fruit set by natural pollination was 89 and 66% during the first (1st) and second (2nd) flowering periods, respectively. A higher number of female-type inflorescences were observed during summer. There were significant differences in seed traits, except for number of seeds per fruit. Accession TREC 31 had the highest individual seed dry weight and 100-seed weight (0.83 g and 79.7 g, respectively). The oil content varied from 19.30% to 35.62%. Seed dry weight had positive correlation with seed fresh weight, seed length, seed thickness, seed width, and 100-seed weight, but negative correlation with oil content. Based on the cluster analysis using 15 morphological traits, jatropha accessions were grouped into five main clusters and accessions from different geographic regions grouped together in a cluster. Principal component analyses (PCA) revealed morphological variation. The first three components explained 73.5% of the total variation and seed dry weight, 100-seed weight, total flowers per inflorescence, male flowers per inflorescence and fruit set can be used to distinguish accessions. The PCA also indicated that flowering traits were more influenced by seed origin while seed traits were affected by flowering spans. Although evaluations were performed in plants during the juvenile phase, accessions TREC 31 and TREC 55 had superior averages for almost all characters evaluated. These results provide a preliminary assessment of the high variability in jatropha accessions evaluated and their potential for use in breeding and genetic improvement programs.

Genetic Potential of Agronomic Traits and Seed Physicochemical Properties of Novel Jatropha Lines Developed from Complex Interspecific Hybridization

“…Number of inflorescences per plant showed negative rp and rg with 100 seed weight, seed width, seed length and seed thickness revealing that high number of inflorescences per plant tended to reduce seed size and seed weight. The findings were similar with Nietsche et al (2015), that reported the number of secondary branches had negative correlations with 100 seed weight, seed width and seed thickness. Table 7 showed rp and rg between fatty acid compositions and phorbol esters content.…”

“…The first five components explained 85.60% of the total variation among the accessions (Table 10). Nietsche et al (2015) evaluated 18 morphological characters of 15 jatropha accessions and showed the first three components explaining 73.5% of the total variation. Vijayanand, Senthil, Vellaikumar, & Paramathma (2009) studied 19 morphological characters of 5 jatropha accessions and found the first three components contributing 84.8%.…”

Quantitative genetic parameters of agronomic and quality traits in a global germplasm collection reveal excellent breeding perspectives for Jatropha curcas L.

“…Furthermore, the duration of the flowering period is depending on the number of flowering peaks per year. Previous studies have shown that jatropha often presents more than one flowering peak per year depending on the genotype, location and the growing conditions in a given year (Gurgel et al ., ; Nietsche et al ., ). Similar observations were made in the present study and the advantages and disadvantages of different flowering and fruit ripening patterns need to be considered for the selection of superior genotypes.…”

Trait selection by path and principal component analysis in Jatropha curcas for enhanced oil yield

“…Principal components analysis (PCA) is a mathematical technique used to categorize large number of variables into major components and assess their contribution to the total variation. This technique has been applied in Jatropha curcas (Zapico et al 2011;Shabanimofrad et al 2013;Sharma et al 2013;Tripathi et al 2015;Nietsche et al 2015) in earlier studies. Accordingly, PCA was carried out to determine the relationship among traits and find the traits which varied together, thus segregating the traits to distinguish parental accessions for plant improvement.…”