ANTIOXIDANT LEAF PIGMENTS AND VARIABILITY IN VEGETABLE AMARANTH

Twenty-three vegetable amaranth genotypes were evaluated for variability, interrelationships among antioxidant leaf pigments and foliage yield. Five genotypes found to be a rich source of antioxidant leaf pigments and might be directly selected as antioxidant leaf pigments enriched high yielding varieties. Two genotypes had high content of antioxidant leaf pigments with low yield might be used as donor parents for antioxidant leaf pigments genes to develop transgressive segregant or pigment enriched transgenic vegetable amaranth varieties. The insignificant negative genotypic correlation was observed between total carotene versus all antioxidant leaf pigments, ascorbic acid versus all antioxidant leaf pigments and foliage yield versus rest of all traits. Improvement of vegetable amaranth regarding carotene and ascorbic acid might be possible without compromising yield loss. On the other hand, most of the interrelationships among antioxidant leaf pigments traits indicated that improving of one antioxidant leaf pigment significantly improved the other antioxidant leaf pigments.