Collecting and evaluation of germplasm of spiked pepper from Brazilian Amazon

Abstract

Spiked pepper (Piper aduncum L.) is an aromatic plant species with high essential oil production. It is a species that occurs abundantly in the Brazilian Amazon. Its essential oil has exploitable biological properties in the human health and agriculture. Aiming to study its germplasm toward future use in genetic breeding programs, collecting was carried out (inflorescences, cuttings, leaves and thin branches) in ten provenances from the Brazilian Amazon. Twelve morphoagronomic traits were determined to take the data: number of leaves by branch, length of leaf, width of the leaf, circumference of the older branch, height of the plant, number of orthotropic branches, number of plageotropic branches, length of the internodes, number of spikes per branches, yielding of oil, content and production of dillapiole, as well as data on the environment and populations of spiked pepper. The inflorescences and cuttings were encoded and sent for the Federal Rural University from Pará State (UFRA), Brazil, for propagation. The leaves and thin branches were sent for the Emílio Goeldi Museum, from Pará State (MPEG) for extraction of essential oil (hydrodistillation). Estimators of amplitude of variation, mean, standard deviation and coefficient of variation were utilized to study the phenotypical variability. The morphoagronomic traits of largest variability were number of orthotropic branches, number of spikes per branch, circumference of the older branch and the content and production of dillapiole. This species has adapted to many different environments of vegetation, soil, climate, relief and drainage becomming easy the domestication and cropping. There is morphoagronomic variability pleasing the selection and genetic breeding.