Abstract
The promotion of domestic sesame requires the development of sesame varieties with a high lignan content, which inevitably necessitates the elucidation of the genetic factors affecting sesamin and sesamolin contents. Therefore, in this experiment, the F1 and F2 plants of seven genetic resources crossed in the half-diallel manner were cultivated in the field, and the sesamin and sesamolin contents of their seeds were analyzed. Based on the Vr /Wr graph, the results fit an additive-dominant model without the influence of epistasis. The additive variance exceeded the dominance variance in both contents—the average degree of dominance was 0.58–0.88. Most of the dominance effects reduced these contents. The narrow sense heritability was 0.859–0.903, which was higher than that estimated from the other traits of sesame. Since no major differences were observed between the F1 and F2 plants in the sesamin and sesamolin contents, and a statistically significant positive correlation was observed between the sesamin and sesamolin contents in each generation, the contents of both sesamin and sesamolin would be controlled by a common polygenic system. The seed parents artificially pollinated with other pollen parents had sesamin and sesamolin contents similar to the self-pollinated seeds. These results clearly showed that selection based on the phenotype in early generations should be effective for breeding higher contents of sesamin and sesamolin.
