Inheritance of Characters Important to Drought Tolerance in New Guinea Impatiens (Impatiens hawkeri)
The study was designed to provide information on the inheritance of certain characters important to drought tolerance in New Guinea impatiens. Seven genotypes, three were drought tolerant and four drought susceptible, were crossed in a full diallel with selfs. Drought tolerance of parents was estimated using stomatal conductance. At least 55 seedlings per cross were grown in the greenhouse for 2 months and evaluated for drought tolerance. Leaf fresh weight (LFW) leaf area (LA), leaf length (LL), leaf width (LW), and leaf thickness (LT) were measured using 10 leaves from each plant (parents plus progeny). From these measurements, we calculated LFW/LA and LL/LW. Stomatal conductance was measured on parents plus progeny of three crosses (drought tolerant × drought tolerant, drought tolerant × drought susceptible and drought susceptible × drought susceptible). Heritabilities and nonadditive and additive genetic variance for each trait were determined. All characters were significantly different between families. LFW/LA and LT was positively correlated with drought tolerance. The heritabilities for these traits were high, indicating that these characters can be used for selecting for drought tolerance in New Guinea impatiens and that rapid progress can be and was made in improving drought tolerance in New Guinea impatiens.