INTRA-VARIETAL CROSSING AS METHOD TO IMPROVE ADAPTATION CHARACTERISTICS IN INITIAL BREEDING ACCESSIONS

The important goal of breeding program is to achieve the heterosis effect and develop the appropriate breeding lines to be used for crossing. The cultivation of the variety or breeding line for a long time and selection process under the same environmental factors lead to decrease of livability and productivity of the variety or breeding line. The intra-varietal and intra-line crossing is the method that enables to improve the genetic basis of the existing breeding accessions, when increasing the recombination ability, particular-ly among valuable and rare characteristics. The accessions of sweet pepper of different ecological origin: local varieties ‘Aeneas’, ‘Ivanhoe’ (Ukraine), ‘Sladkiy’ (Italy), breeding line ‘n 138d’ (Russia) were taken to study the influence of intra-varietal crossing on recovery of combining ability in breeding lines. The progeny produced from intra-varietal crossing has been assessed for the fruit number, average fruit weight, yielding ability and marketability, and then consequently compared with control accession. As results showed the yielding ability had increased by 2.3-25.7%, depending on genotype, while the fruit weight had increased by 2-11%. Phenological observation showed that there is no significant difference at the phase of growing and development between control plants and plants produced through intra-varietal crossing. The detailed progeny assessment has revealed the different effect of adaptive ability among different plants when the plants crossing within the same accession. This enables to select the best accessions to be used in further heterosis breeding pro-gram.