Inheritance of leaf color in papaya

Abstract Physiological disturbances are one of the major bottlenecks to the expansion of papaya crops due to the negative influence on fruit quality. Studies on genotypes of light-green color have become essential to the development of strategies of tolerance to the physiological disorder skin freckle. Understanding the inheritance of qualitative traits is crucial to selection and prediction of the behavior of segregating generations. Thus, this study aimed to determine the inheritance of the qualitative trait leaf color in segregating generations of crosses between the dark-green cultivar BSA and the light-green cultivar GPC. Inheritance was determined based on the Mendelian genetics laws, by evaluating the phenotypic proportions in the analysis of generations P1 (BSA), P2 (GPC), F1, F2, BC1, BC2, BC2r, and F2:3. The inheritance of light-green leaves from the crossing between BSA and GPG is due to double recessive epistasis.