With the purposes of evaluating F1 hybrids of sweet pepper, together with their parents, for resistance to Meloidogyne incognita (races 1, 2, 3 and 4) and M. javanica nematodes, an experiment was conducted in glasshouse conditions in the facilities of Pioneer Sementes Ltda, in Ijaci, MG, Brazil. A randomized block in split-plot design was used with five plots, composed of four races of M. incognita and one isolate of M. javanica, and 48 subplots, composed of 47 genotypes of sweet pepper and one cultivar of tomato (Ângela Gigante I-5100) as a standard check. Five replicates and eight plants in each subplot were used. Inoculation was done with 60 eggs/mL of substrate mixture of vermiculite, Pinus sp. bark and carbonized rice husk. After 60 days following inoculation, the evaluations were performed. All the cultivars and standard-lines (line 004 and line 006) were susceptible to the races 1, 2, 3 and 4 of M. incognita. All the genotypes of sweet pepper were resistant to M. javanica. Almost all of the experimental lines were proved to be resistant to all of the four races of M. incognita. The same occurred to most of the experimental hybrids F1, although the degree of resistance of the hybrids in general was lower than that of their respective resistant parents. It is thus proven to be feasible to utilize F1 hybrids by crossing resistant to susceptible sweet pepper lines to control the nematodes M. incognita and M. javanica through varietal resistance.
Capsicum annuun; nematode; Meloidogyne incognita; Meloidogyne javanica
