GENETIC ANALYSIS OF NUTRITIONAL TRAITS IN TROPICAL CARROT (Daucus carota L.)

Carrot has wide color range particularly purple, orange, red and yellow dependent upon anthocyanins, beta-carotene, lycopene and lutein content. Due to recent awareness of nutritional health security, there is increasing consumption of carrot by consumers as well as nutraceutical based industry owing to huge bioavailability of dietary vitamins, phytonutrients and bioactive compounds of carrots. Though, breeding for multinutritional rich carrot varieties, there is need to study and understand the genetic mechanism of nutritional traits viz., moisture, total solids, total soluble solids, total carotenoids, beta-carotene, lycopene and total anthocyanin content. Keeping these in view, the present investigation was designed to study the six genetic parameter in six generation of twelve cross combinations. The six digenic parameter model results clearly revealed that additive [d], dominance [h], additive x additive [i], additive x dominance [j] and dominance x dominance [l] interactions governed nutritional traits in the crosses studied. The positive sign of dominance [h] and dominance x dominance [l] resulted into complimentary epistatic interactions controlling moisture content and total solids, total soluble solids, total carotenoids and beta-carotene, lycopene (in all crosses except PM x IPC-122) and total anthocyanin content. From the higher frequency of allele dispersal [a+i] between the parents, it is evident that the selection process should be delayed until homozygosity is attained in advance generation which can be obtained through inter-mating of parents followed by cyclic recurrent selection and mass selection for nutritional traits with consecutive cross combinations. This epistatic parameter of genetic analysis would be effectively utilized for breeding strategy for improvement of nutritional traits in carrot.