Combining Ability and Performance of Cotton Germplasm with Diverse Seed Oil Content
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Crop Science Society of America. All rights reserved. Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) production has traditionally been guided by fiber yield and quality, but recent interest has focused on using cottonseed as a food; therefore, cottonseed oil content is an important trait to understand. A line-by-tester analysis was used to determine combining abilities by crossing four lines (PD 7723, PD 94042, PD 3246, and PD 5377) and four testers (TX 21, TX 101, TX 182, and TX 244) with varying seed oil content selected from accessions in the US National Cotton Germplasm Collection. Seed oil content was found to be a heritable trait (H2 = 0.52). The analysis showed that a large part of the phenotypic variation in oil content was associated with general combining ability, although significant specific combining ability occurred in several crosses. Overall, TX 182 and TX 101 had higher combining abilities, while PD 94042 had the lowest combining ability for oil content. Among hybrids, PD 3246 TX 101, PD 7723 TX 101, and PD 5377 TX 182 had the highest combining abilities. All traits tested in these environments showed highly significant genotype environment effects. The highest mean oil was observed in Florence, SC, during 2010 (TX 182, 28.28%). This study suggests that there is sufficient additive variance available for plant breeders to improve seed oil content. In addition, correlation analyses indicated that oil content can be increased at the same time as seed index, boll weight, and fiber traits including elongation, uniformity, upper half mean length (UHML), and strength.
