A plant breeding approach to eliminate the development of calcium deficiency symptoms in sweet pepper growing

Abstract

Plants show significant differences regarding the dynamics of the uptake and transport of the nutrients. The results of our experiments gave an explanation of the fact that the Ca2+ uptake and transport ability of pepper is different in each genotype. The Ca2+ requirement of the fruits of certain varieties is significantly higher than the amount the plant itself can take up. The determined selection and the further breeding work aimed to solve this anomaly and enable the safe growing of sweet pepper irrespectively of the CaCO3 level of the soil. The basic goal of our breeding work was to improve the calcium utilization efficiency of the tomato-shaped sweet pepper variety ’PAZ’ which is sensitive to calcium deficiency. Crossing with a suitable partner (Torkál F1) resulted in a hybrid (Tokyo) the Ca2+ uptake, translocation and ecological adaptability of which proved to be far better compared to the free-pollinating variety. Regarding fruit quality, the hybrid did not leg behind the biological and consumers’ values of the parental genotypes.