Vol. 11, Issue 6 (2022)

Author(s):
Rawale Gauri Bhalchandra, Anita Kumari, Sumankumar Jha, Sanjeev Thakur and Ptratiksha Saini

Abstract:
The present study was confined to 11 natural populations of Myrica esculenta Buch-Ham. ex D. Don distributed in three districts of Himachal Pradesh. From each population five trees were selected. Serbharal population was superior to other populations in term of tree size. Serbharal population had maximum tree height (24.40m) whereas minimum in Shilly (12.20 m) population. The maximum tree diameter (87cm) was recorded in the Serbharal population whereas minimum (63cm) in the Jaunaji population. Maximum leaf length and leaf breadth were recorded in Tutu (10.65cm) and Rajgarh (3.24cm) populations, respectively, whereas minimum leaf length and leaf breadth were found in Shogi population i.e. (7.63cm) and (2.40cm), respectively. Mother tree variance was higher as compared to the population and within tree variance for all the tree morphological characters. Mother tree repeatability co-efficient was higher for all the tree morphological traits ranging from 0.81 for leaf breadth, 0.82 for petiole length and 0.86 for leaf length (Table 2). Population repeatability co-efficient was low for all the parameters except tree height where it was moderate (0.38).