Vol. 12, Issue 7 (2023)

Author(s):
Pavithra G, Karunakaran G, Sivaramakrishna VNP, Sakthivel T, Arivalagan M and Lakshmana Reddy DC

Abstract:
With recent cultivation in India, the dragon fruit still have lacks related to the selection of promising materials and there are not yet commercial varieties in the country. Therefore, manual pollination was carried out between the red and white cultivars of dragon fruit. Cultivars of Red and White were reciprocally crossed to develop hybrids. To assess the progenies' genetic diversity for use in breeding programmes in the future using cladodes characteristics, five characteristics were evaluated: days taken for vegetative bud formation, number of primary branches, number of secondary branches, distance between the areoles and spines per areole. The analysis of variance indicated that genotypes D 22/6, D 22/7 were most similar, while genotypes of D 22/1 is the most different. Studies in other countries have found high variation in characteristics of agronomic importance, even within the same species of H. undatus which is considered favorable for future breeding studies.