Vol. 12, Issue 6 (2023)

Author(s):
Asar Ahmad Sheikh, Rakesh Kumar, Parshant Bakshi, Reetika Sharma, Reena, Vijay Kumar, Neeraj Sharma, Vishal Raina and BK Sinha

Abstract:
The present investigation was carried out from seeded origin of wild germplasm of loquat in Jammu subtropics areas during the year 2019-20at SKUAST-J, Jammu and Kashmir (UT), India. During the investigation, one hundred loquat genotypes was explored of different location to estimate the extent of genetic diversity by morphological and biochemical characterization using NBPGR descriptor. The genotypes evaluated during the investigation recorded significant amount of variability for various descriptive and quantitative characteristics. Fruit length ranged from 2.84 to 4.61 cm, fruit width 2.25 to 3.86 cm, fruit weight 10.87 to 26.87 g, seed length 11.59 to 23.78 mm, seed width 10.03 to 18.90 mm, seed weight 2.27 to 5.89 g, number of seeds per fruit 1.66 to 4.33, pulp percent 50.81 to 66.86 percent, fruit yield 24.31 to 43.96 kg/tree and juice percent 57.21 to 84.98 percent. Majority of genotypes showed high juice percent. Total soluble solids ranged from 10.03 to 11.62 ^oBrix, titratable acidity 1.02 to 1.61 percent, TSS acid ratio 6.66 to 10.43, total sugars 7.99 to 8.83%, reducing sugars 4.70 to 5.81 percent and non-reducing sugars 2.57 to 3.40%. Phenotypic coefficient of variability was slightly higher in magnitude than genotypic coefficient of variability and broad sense heritability was high for all the characters. Genetic advance as percentage of mean varied from 4.54% (total sugars) to 43.69% (number of seeds per fruit). Correlation coefficients revealed that fruit weight showed positive phenotypic and genotypic correlation with fruit yield, seed length, juice percent and pulp percent. Five major components were detected using principle component analysis exhibiting 74.88%of total variance. On the basis of cluster analysis all the genotypes were divided into seven clusters having 304.13 to 2915.52 inter-cluster distance and 462.21 to 823.93 intra-cluster distance.