Morphological diversity in litchi based on phenological traits

Abstract

Twenty nine quantitative phenological traits were used to assess the morphological diversity among30 Indianlitchi genotypes. Coefficients of variation for length and width of panicle, number of primary and secondarydichasia, maximum length of primary and secondary dichasia, maximum and minimum distance between twoprimary dichasia and origin of number of primary dichasia (primary branches on panicle) from same point,filament length, length and diameter of anther, number of fruits/cluster and yield/ plant were more than 20%.The number of secondary dichasia was highly correlated with the length of stigma. Similarly, number of fruitsper cluster and yield, and fruit weight and thickness of pedicle were also correlated. Genotypes were dividedinto two main groups which corresponding to the size of the panicle and yield. Cluster-I contained genotypesof comparatively small panicle with lower yield, while cluster-II is composed of larger panicle with higheryield. From variability analysis, length and width of panicle, number of secondary dichasia, maximum lengthof primary dichasia, length of male flower, stamen length, thickness of pedicle, number of fruits/cluster andfruit weight were identified as important traits for identifying high-yielding genotypes.