Morphoagronomical characteristics display high genetic diversity in Murupi chili pepper

Resumo

Murupi chili pepper is a hot Amazonian pepper, which has been used as flavoring in this region, yet its diversity is as of yet unknown. This paper aims to assess it in 20 landraces from Peruvian, Colombian and Brazilian Amazon. The experiment was carried out in Manaus-AM, using a randomized block design with three replicates and five plants per plot. Analyses of variance showed significant differences for all nine descriptors. Fruit yield showed, in average, to be 208 fruit/plant, tantamount to 381 g/plant. Given 50% of relative distances estimated by generalized Mahalanobis distances and, Nearest Neighbor Clustering, they displayed six groups. Cluster I comprised 50% of the landraces. Clusters IV, V and VI were represented by ‘8’ (Putumayo, Colombia), ‘27’ (Yurimaguas, Peru) and ‘24’ (Jutaí/AM, Brazil), respectively. The highest yielding landrace showed to be ‘17’ (Manicoré/AM, Brazil), bearing 685 fruits and 1919 g/plant. Our findings suggest Murupi pepper may possibly be improved by selection and/or hybridization.