Abstract

PEREZ PELEA, Leneidy et al. Characterization of genetic diversity in three guava (Psidium guajava L.) populations. cultrop [online]. 2016, vol.37, n.2, pp. 115-126. ISSN 1819-4087.

Guava (Psidium guajava L.) is an economically important fruit tree in several countries, where breeding programs are being developed with different objectives. Evaluations on the genetic variability of crop germplasm collections have been performed in some of these countries; however, the variability present in guava populations had not been evaluated so far. Ten quantitative morphoagronomic traits were assessed for three years in parents and progenies of three guava populations, with the aim of characterizing the genetic diversity of such populations derived from controlled crossings. Main component analysis clusters and discriminant factorials were made in order to determine the highest variability characters that allow making up diversity groups and confirming if there are differences among them. Significant differences were also determined among populations for the characters: leaf length and width, plant height, fruit length and width, external and internal pulp thickness, and seed number per fruit. Fruit characters were the greatest contributors to the variability observed. Regarding dendrograms obtained, four diversity groups were formed in each population, mainly based on fruit mass, length and width, seed number and its total mass per fruit. All the results allowed detecting high population variability for the traits evaluated

Keywords : genetic variability; genetic breeding; tropical fruit trees; diversity groups.

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