The Passiflora alata Curtis is a fruit plant with increasing economical interest because its esthetic, medicinal, organoleptics and nutritional characteristics. However, some technological problems need to be overcome concerning its utilization, such as the absence of cultivar presenting fruits with high pulp revenue, fine skin and high Brix degree. This research was aimed at to analyzing the genetic basis of the fruit characteristics of the sweet passion fruit plant, by evaluating the combining ability. To achieve the goals, it was used a partial diallel, involving 36 F1s and the 12 parental. It was estimated the General Combining Ability - GCA and the Specific Combining Ability - SCA for weigh of the fruit, weight of the pulp, thickness of the skin, Brix degree and pulp revenue. There were not found statistically significant differences in GCA values weight of the fruit, weight of the pulp and Brix degree. The SCA values also did not show statistically significant differences for all the characteristics analyzed, which show that the variability is predominately due to addictive gene effects. One should, for this reason, do selection for characteristics with larger inheritance. Among the genitors evaluated, mother 2, mother 6 and father 5 were outstanding, because they exhibited the best ranking average, being promising plants for future crosses in order to obtain superior progenies for agronomic traits.
fruit breeding; native fruit; diallel; pulp revenue; passion fruit
