The level of inbreeding of plants resulting from self-pollination
of those S2 and F3 plants increased, as expected, but remained
the same in 14 lines. In contrast, 7 lines showed high increases in
the inbreeding coefficient (Table 2). In previous work, the level of
inbreeding ofthese same plants in the S2 and F3 generations ranged
from 0.79 to 0.96 (Oliveira et al., 2010a), whereas in this study, it
ranged from 0.85 to 1.00. This shows an average increase of 7.52%
in the inbreeding level. Eleven lines from S2 and F3 plants (Oliveira
et al., 2010a) and another 11 from the present work showed high
inbreeding levels (f = 1.00). Thus, marker-assisted breeding techniques
with microsatellites could be very useful to develop new
papaya inbred lines with high homozygosis faster than classical
breedingprocedures. This reduction was achievedby selecting lines
that retained the lowest proportion of heterozygous loci. These
selection criteria have evolved overtime, as technology has allowed
for more rapid genotyping.