Heritability of Rosa spp. Plant Architecture in Diploid Rose

The plant architecture is a crucial trait in plant breeding as it has been shown to be linked to crop yield. For ornamental crops such as roses, plant architecture is key for its aesthetic and economic value. The objectives of my study are to evaluate the segregation and inheritance of plant architecture in selected rose populations. Four rose populations and their parents both in the field and greenhouse were characterized for twenty architectural traits. As this process is very time-consuming and not practical for the characterization of large numbers of plants, this data was subjected to a variance and correlation analysis with the objective of identifying the measurements that best describe plant architecture. This analysis and previous work led to six plant architectural components that describe rose plant architecture: number of primary shoots per plant, number of nodes on primary shoot, number of secondary shoots per primary shoot, number of tertiary shoots per primary shoot, length of primary shoot, and plant height. These traits will be used to characterize fifteen diploid rose populations for which the genetic variance components of the traits will be calculated.