Morphological traits as variety descriptors of Arachis pintoi
Caroline Marques Castro, Caroline Moore Wagner, José Francisco Montenegro Valls, and Claudio Takao Karia
Arachis pintoi is outstanding in the present agricultural scenery for adapting well to varied environments and in view of its high yield of quality fodder. It is therefore used as forage crop in different countries. In the last 15 years, more than ten cultivars were released in different countries; none of them is protected in Brazil. To protect a cultivar the minimum descriptors of the species must be determined. In this study, F2 populations of A. pintoi were evaluated by the number of bristles on the petiole, number of bristles on the basal and distal leaflets, length and width of internodes, length and width of basal and distal leaflets, and flower color. The objective was the determination of morphological traits for variety identification of forage peanut. The performance of the F2 progenies was trait-dependent. The heritability of all traits was high, indicating that a great part of the variation observed in these genotypes is genetic. This reinforces the usefulness of these traits as variety descriptors of forage peanut.