Morphological and Chemical Analysis of 16 Avocado Accessions (Persea americana) From China by Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis

Yu Ge,Lin Tan,Bin Wu,Funing Ma

doi:10.5539/jas.v10n8p80

Abstract

The physicochemical composition of avocado fruit has been well reported, but there is little detail on Chinese native avocado varieties. The present study investigated the morphological characteristics, oil contents, and fatty acid compositions of 16 avocado accessions grown in the tropical and subtropical regions of China. Eight fatty acids were identified and quantified by GC-MS. The major fatty acids of avocado pulp were palmitic, oleic, and linoleic acids, accounting for 78-91% of the total fatty acids content. The analysis of one-way variance (ANOVA) of the data revealed morphological and chemical differences between most of avocado accessions. Moreover, 16 avocado accessions were distinguished through a PCA scores scatter plot and cluster analysis based on fatty acid profiles. The results identified some remarkable characteristics of avocado accessions from different places of collection.

Highlights

Avocado (Persea americana Mill.), a member of the family Lauraceae of the order Laurales, is a plant native to Central America, South America, and Mexico (Schaffer et al, 2012)
With the exception of RN-12, the weights of the fruits of the 14 native Chinese avocado accessions all exceeded that of the Hass cultivar
The results showed significant differences between the different avocado accessions (p < 0.05) in terms of their morphological characteristics, oil content, and fatty acid composition

Summary

Introduction

Avocado (Persea americana Mill.), a member of the family Lauraceae of the order Laurales, is a plant native to Central America, South America, and Mexico (Schaffer et al, 2012). The avocado is among the most economically important subtropical/tropical fruit crops in the world, and production and consumption levels have increased dramatically during the last 150 years (Schaffer et al, 2012). Avocados were first introduced to the Taiwan province of China in 1918 (Papademetriou, 2000), allowing the rapid propagation of superior varieties to develop an industry producing avocados with superior plant characteristics and fruit quality. Since the late 1950s, hundreds of avocado varieties have been introduced in China successively from the United States, Mexico, and Central America (Ge et al, 2017a). Natural hybridization between avocado varieties often occurs, producing many new avocado hybrids in state-owned or private farms. Some Chinese native superior avocado varieties are widely cultivated in the tropical and subtropical regions of China (Ge et al, 2017a)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion