Breeding for quality traits in chilli: a review

Quality in chilli is mainly determined by pungency, colour, dry matter and vitamin C. The quality requirements vary with the purpose for which chilli is utilized. Therefore, breeder has to develop the varieties according to that specific purpose. Thus routine breeding methods as pedigree and pure line selections are ineffective and inadequate to explore the full range of genetic variability and the estimations were mostly biased due to linkage and epistasis for complex characters like yield, quality and yield contributing characters. To avoid an inversely related compensation effect between yield and quality, recurrent selection has been recommended for the improvement of dried chilli. Source populations should be derived from intercrossing of parents with good general combining ability for fruit quality characters. With the exception of fruit colour among quality traits, the efficacy of early generation selection for most quality traits has not been explored in connection with genotype x environment interaction and quantitative inheritance. As the chemical composition of chilli fruits changes during ripening as well as post-harvest processing, sampling fruits for screening and selection should be done judiciously to minimize non-genetic source of variation among selection units. Breeder devotes much of their time and skill towards improving fruit yield potential of the crop but improving fruit quality along with yield is a challenge for future breeding.