Fruit quality and morphoagronomic characterization of a Brazilian Capsicum germplasm collection

Capsicum peppers are valued in Brazil and throughout the world for their great variety of shapes, colors, flavors, and pungency levels. Various health benefits have been attributed to chili peppers, including their antioxidant activity. Despite great efforts to characterize Capsicum germplasm around the world, few studies have used biochemical descriptors. We examined 11 morphoagronomic and six biochemical descriptors for the fruit to analyze 69 Capsicum accessions from four regions of Brazil; these belong to the Instituto Federal do Espirito Santo - Campus de Alegre Germplasm Collection. The accessions comprise five different Capsicum taxa: Capsicum chinense, Capsicum baccatum var. pendulum, Capsicum frutescens, Capsicum annuum var. annuum and Capsicum annuum var. glabriusculum. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomized design with three replicates under field conditions. For all the traits examined, ANOVA showed a significant variability between accessions. We detected significant diversity among the Capsicum genotypes; the Scott-Knott's test grouped the accessions into five to 14 groups, depending on the trait. Pearson's correlation analysis revealed strong correlation between morphoagronomic (fruit length, diameter and weight) and physical and-chemical (soluble solids and moisture content) traits. Principal component analysis indicated that fruit diameter and fruit fresh mass were among the most important traits contributing to diversity among the accessions. Together these results demonstrate the success of indirect selection of useful chemical properties in Capsicum peppers through breeding for other easy-to-measure morphoagronomic traits. This research is also an important step for the creation of a representative collection of pepper germplasm, facilitating the conservation of this genetic resource, which suffers a continuous process of genetic erosion.