Inheritance of low erucic acid content in Indian mustard Brassica juncea (L.)

The high erucic acid content of Brassica juncea oil is associated with a number of negative effects in mammals, including humans. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the inheritance of erucic acid content across F₁, BC₁F₁ and BC₁F₂ generations derived from crosses between high erucic acid genotypes (RSPR-03 and RH-749) and low erucic acid genotypes (PM-21 and Pusa Karishma). The erucic acid content in selfed seeds, F1, BC1F1 progenies and parental lines was quantified using gas-liquid chromatography (GLC). Ten plants from each parent, twenty F1s plants, one hundred BC1F1 plants and two hundred BC1F2 plants were phenotyped. The range of the erucic acid content was 17.12 % to 41.94 %. The backcrosses' BC1F2 generation has a lower erucic acid level than its parents. The BC1F2 generation of backcross [RSPR-03 × (RSPR-03 × Pusa Karishma)] had the lowest erucic acid content (17.12 %), followed by the BC1F2 generation of backcross [RH-749 × (RH-749 × PM-21)], which had an 18.48 % erucic acid content. The population data conformed well to the expected segregation ratio of 1:4:6:4:1, suggesting that low erucic acid is governed by recessive inheritance and that the trait is digenically inherited with an additive gene effect. Among the studied genotypes, the BC₁F₂ generation from the cross [RSPR-03 × (RSPR-03 × Pusa Karishma)] exhibited superior performance for more than 50 % of the evaluated morphological and biochemical traits