Morphological, Biochemical and Electrophoretic Evaluation of Chilli (Capsicum annuum. L) Genotypes Singh Diwakar1,*, Mehta Reetu1, Talati J.G.1,2 1National Research Centre for Groundnut, Junagadh, 362 001, Gujarat, India. 2Department of Biochemistry, BA College of Agriculture, Anand Agricultural University, Anand, 388 110, Gujarat, India. *Author for correspondence: Email: diwakarbiochem@rediffmail.com
Abstract Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) is one of the important spice crops in India and cultivated on 930 thousand hectare land. Traditional approaches to varietal identification involve the study of morphological descriptors, which is not only time consuming and resource requiring but is also affected by the environment. The present study was, therefore, undertaken to test the efficacy of seed protein electrophoresis over morphological and other biochemical characters, like total soluble sugars, oil, capsaicin and peroxidase activity for varietal identification of 12 chilli genotypes. The results revealed that morphological descriptors like thousand seed weight, single fruit weight, leaf area, single fruit length and width ratio can be used for grouping of 12 chilli genotypes. Biochemical tests showed that maximum TSS, oil percentage and capsaicin were present in G-4, ACG-254 and ACG-291 having values of 36.16%, 53.00% and 0.726 mg/g, respectively, whereas ACS-2000-2, ACS- 2001-1 and ACG-209 exhibited minimum TSS, oil percentage and capsaicin giving values of 19.98%, 20.25% and 0.261 mg/g, respectively. The differences have also been observed in peroxidase activity, the highest and the lowest activity was found in ACS-2001-4 and ACS-2000-2, respectively. SDS-PAGE of soluble seed proteins showed different banding patterns, which might be used for varietal identification. Band No. 3 was found as unique band for ACG-209 only, bands 6, 7 and 8 were only absent in the genotypes S-49, ACS-2000-2 and ACG-209, respectively and thus were found useful for identification of respective genotypes. Thus, present studies indicated that morphological descriptors and biochemical tests are only useful for grouping and classifying chilli genotypes. Peroxidase activity and SDS-PAGE of soluble seed proteins can be used for genotype identification. Top Key words Chilli, electrophoresis, morphological, biochemical, identification, SDS-PAGE, peroxidase activity. Top |