Studies on genetic divergence in unique indigenous mango accessions of western ghats

Studies carried out on the genetic divergence in 43 unique indigenous mango accessions using 19 quantitative traits exhibited high phenotypic and genotypic variance for fruit weight (12909.38, 12661.92) followed by vitamin ‘C’ (1231.71 and 1221.023). The genotypic coefficient of variation was more than 60 per cent for the characters fruit weight, vitamin C and sugars indicating that selection procedure can be applied in the improvement of characteristics, which is confirmed by the findings of heritability in broad sense and was observed to be high (>90 per cent) for all the fruit parameters except for pulp per cent, which recorded a moderate heritability estimate of 76 per cent, indicating the influence of environment on this character. The genotypic correlation coefficients were higher than phenotypic correlation coefficients and the fruit weight was observed to have high positive phenotypic and genotypic correlation with pulp per cent, pH, total sugars, non-reducing sugars reducing sugars and stone weight, indicating that selection of medium sized fruits will lead to good pulp recovery.