Selection possibilities for seed content-a determinant of fresh fruit quality in guava (Psidium guajavaL.)

Abstract

Improvement of guava with regard to less and soft seed content necessitates insight into the magnitude of variability present in the seed characters. Fruit samples were examined for the variability in pulp: seed weight ratio, number and weight of seeds fruit-1, 100-seed weight, number of seeds 100g-1 fruit and seed content in fruit in relation with fruit weight during winter seasons of 2003-04 and 2004-05 on sixty-eight genotypes from diverse origin. The differences among the genotypes were highly significant (P< 0.01) for all the characters studied. A wide range of variation (17.10 to 5905.31) was recorded for the pulp: seed weight ratio with the mean value of 123.36 showing very high (241.59%) coefficient of variation. Highest mean (254.64) was recorded for number of seeds fruit-1(ranging from 2 to 463.0). The high genetic coefficient of variation and heritability estimates associated with greater genetic advance as percent of mean were recorded for pulp: seed weight ratio, 100-seed weight and number of seeds fruit-1, which indicated that these three characters had additive gene effect and therefore effective selections can be made for these characters.