LOW-PUNGENT SWEET PEPPER SELECTED UNDER CONTINUOUS FLUORESCENT ILLUMINATION

‘Shishito’ (Capsicum annuum L.) is a group of sweet pepper cultivars.
Fruits are small, green and non-pungent, but pungent fruits sometimes occur.
In our previous study, plants of ‘Shishito’ grew well and bore abundant fruits under continuous fluorescent illumination, however, pungent fruit strongly increased.
In this study, mutation was induced and screening for low-pungent variants in M₂-M₃ was conducted under continuous fluorescent illumination.
Seeds of ‘Shishi-Homare’ were treated with a 30 Gy 220 MeV ¹²C⁵⁺ beam.
Self-fertilized M₂ seeds were harvested from M₁ plants individually.
First screening was conducted in the field and 126 plants were selected from 762 plants.
Second screening was conducted in a growth chamber under continuous fluorescent illumination, in which the concentration of the pungent compound capsaicin in the fruit placenta was determined with HPLC. One plant with the lowest capsaicin concentration was selected and self-pollinated.
M₃ plants were grown under continuous fluorescent illumination.
The capsaicin concentration of M₃ plants under continuous fluorescent illumination was lower than that of M₂ plants however, plants with high capsaicin level still existed.
One plant with the lowest capsaicin concentration was selected and self-pollinated.
The capsaicin concentration of M₄ plants under continuous fluorescent illumination was much lower than that of wild type ‘Shishi-Homare’; the average concentration of M₄ plants was about one sixth of that of the wild type.

VI International Symposium on Light in Horticulture

K. Murakami, T. Yamamoto, K. Fujimoto, K. Okabe, M. Masuda, T. Abe, K. Maeda

Capsicum annuum, ion-beam, mutation, pungency, ‘Shishito’

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2011.907.37