Abstract:
An investigation was carried out to study characterization, character association and genetic
diversity of capsicum at the Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka, Bangladesh during
2012-2015. Evaluation and morphological characterization of 24 Capsicum accessions were
performed using different qualitative and quantitative characters. Wide range of variations
among the accessions in respect of plant, leaf, flower, fruit and seed characters were observed.
From the field performance it was evident that, the accessions CA-16, CA-20, CA-18 and CA
05 were the higher yielder where as the accession CA-19 produced very shy yields. Correlation
studies between yield and yield components indicated that fruit diameter, fruit length, plant
height and seeds per fruit were significantly and positively correlated with yield. Genotypie
correlation coefficient was higher than phenotypic ones in most of the cases, indicating strong
inherent relation among the characters. From path coefficient analysis, it was observed that
number of fruits/plant, diameter of fruits and fruit weight were the important components of
yield of Capsicum. Based on multivariate analysis, 24 capsicum accessions were grouped into
five clusters. The highest number of accessions (8) was in cluster Ill followed by cluster II (6)
and the lowest (2) was in cluster IV. Principal component analysis revealed that the first four
axes were accounted for 79.49% of total variation. Inter-genotypic distance was the highest
(4.184) between CA-19 and CA-20 and lowest (0.420) was between CA-05 and CA-17. From
the principal co-ordinate analysis, the highest inter-cluster distance (39.99) was estimated
between cluster I and cluster IV, and the lowest (11.5) was between cluster II and cluster V.
The inter-cluster distance was higher than the intra-cluster distance. Accessions CA-16, CA-18,
CA-20 and CA-05 were selected as promising genotypes. RAPD analysis of 24 Capsicum
accessions was done to detect genetic diversity at the DNA level. Selected five primers (0PB
08, OPC-05, OPJ-13 and OPW-08) amplified 29 bands of which 25 were polymorphic.
Similarity indices ranged from 51.71 to 98.18%. Dendrogram based on Nei's (1972) genetic
distance using UPGMA indicated that, different level of genetic identity and distance was
present among the studied 24 Capsicum accessions.
