title: Exploring natural variation of photosynthetic, primary metabolism and growth parameters in a large panel of Capsicum chinense accessions.
abstract: Collectively, the results presented improve upon the utility of an important genetic resource and attest to a complex genetic basis for differences in both leaf metabolism and fruit morphology between natural populations. Diversity of accessions within the same species provides an alternative method to identify physiological and metabolic traits that have large effects on growth regulation, biomass and fruit production. Here, we investigated physiological and metabolic traits as well as parameters related to plant growth and fruit production of 49 phenotypically diverse pepper accessions of Capsicum chinense grown ex situ under controlled conditions. Although single-trait analysis identified up to seven distinct groups of accessions, working with the whole data set by multivariate analyses allowed the separation of the 49 accessions in three clusters. Using all 23 measured parameters and data from the geographic origin for these accessions, positive correlations between the combined phenotypes and geographic origin were observed, supporting a robust pattern of isolation-by-distance. In addition, we found that fruit set was positively correlated with photosynthesis-related parameters, which, however, do not explain alone the differences in accession susceptibility to fruit abortion. Our results demonstrated that, although the accessions belong to the same species, they exhibit considerable natural intraspecific variation with respect to physiological and metabolic parameters, presenting diverse adaptation mechanisms and being a highly interesting source of information for plant breeders. This study also represents the first study combining photosynthetic, primary metabolism and growth parameters for Capsicum to date.
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck Partner Group at the Departamento de Biologia Vegetal, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, Minas Gerais, 36570-900, Brazil.
authors.forename: Laise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Rosado-Souza
authors.forename: Federico
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Scossa
authors.forename: Izabel S
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Chaves
authors.forename: Sabrina
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kleessen
authors.forename: Luiz F D
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Salvador
authors.forename: Jocimar C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Milagre
authors.forename: Fernando
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Finger
authors.forename: Leonardo L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Bhering
authors.forename: Ronan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Sulpice
authors.forename: Wagner L
authors.initials: WL
authors.lastname: Araújo
authors.forename: Zoran
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Nikoloski
authors.forename: Alisdair R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Fernie
authors.forename: Adriano
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nunes-Nesi
mesh_terms: D002212:Capsicum / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000502:physiology*; D010788:Photosynthesis / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology