Capsicum peppers are extremely important in Brazil for the spice market and as ornamental. The estimation of genetic diversity is important for the choice of parents in a breeding program. This study aimed to evaluate the efficiency of multicategoric descriptors for flowers to estimate the genetic dissimilarity among Capsicum chinense accessions from the Capsicum Active Germplasm Bank of Embrapa Temperate Agriculture The experiment was conducted from October 2009 to March 2010 in the experimental field of Embrapa Temperate Agriculture, with 22 accessions evaluated in randomized blocks and ten plants per plot. Five flowers of each plant, ten plants per access were used for the morphological characterization of the flowers. Five quantitative and ten qualitative multicategoric descriptors were used, making a total of 15. Mean comparison tests were carried out, and the clustering methods UPGMA and Tocher were used for quantitative data, and the Tocher method for qualitative data. The accessions showed wide genetic diversity in relation to descriptors of flowers, with great variability among accessions, which recommends its use in breeding programs. The use of multicategoric descriptors for flowers is efficient to estimate the genetic dissimilarity among accessions of Capsicum chinense.
peppers; Solanaceae; genetic resources; germplasm active bank
