Phenotypic Characterization of Selected Traits in ‛Saba’ Banana (Musa balbisiana), Chico (Manilkara zapota) and Pummelo (Citrus maxima) for Crop Improvement
Pablito M. Magdalita and Alangelico O. San Pascual
Phenotypic characteristics of ‛Saba’ banana, chico and pummelo were assessed for variability, clustering patterns and character association of 67 saba clones, 71 chico and 73 pummelo genotypes collected mainly from Luzon. Characters were analyzed for agglomerative clustering and correlation analyses. Five clusters for saba, chico and pummelo genotypes were arbitrarily formed a highly branched dendrogram for each species was generated. In ‛Saba’, 22 grouped in Clusters 1, 24, 18, 1 and 2 in Clusters II, III, IV and V, respectively. In chico, 67 genotypes clustered in Cluster I, while 1 each belongs to Clusters II, III, IV and V. In pummelo, 37, 4, 29, 2 and 1 genotypes grouped, respectively, in Clusters I, II, III, IV and V. High degree of association between characters indicated dependency of certain characters on others, suggesting that evaluation of traits can be reduced to save time, effort and resources during peak of evaluation periods. Eighteen saba clones of Cluster III, while in Chico, CH7-IPB in Cluster II and 41 accessions from Clusters I and II of pummelo could be used in varietal improvement due to high total soluble solids (TSS) and edible portion, heavy fruit weight and size, and few number of seeds for chico and pummelo.