Inheritance of seed size by hybrid populations of pea (F1, F2)

Pea (Pisum sativum L.) is one of the ancient and valuable high-protein leguminous cultures in the world. Breeding of new high-yielding cultivars is the main reserve to increase production of pea seeds. At the present time, intraspecific hybridization has a great importance in selection of new cultivars of pea. However, consistent patterns of inheritance of a number of economically valuable traits by hybrids are still insufficiently investigated. The objective of this research work was to study inheritance of seed size (1000-kernel weight) by pea hybrids of the first and second filial generations (F-1, F-2). The crossing and backcrossing (reciprocal crossing) were conducted. In our experiments, the first filial generation hybrids (F-1) had a lower 1000-kernel weight than the large-seeded parental cultivars. Herewith the large-seeded genotype of the female parental cultivar had more influence on displaying of this trait in hybrids than of the male parental cultivar. In the second filial generation hybrids (F-2) showed intermediate inheritance of seed size. The results of our experiments attest high efficiency of seed size selection in segregating generations of hybrids, obtained from crosses between cultivars carrying genes of seed size.