Author(s):

Shilpa Parashuram, NV Singh, P Roopasowjanya, KD Babu, Vipul Sangnure, Sarvesh Singh, Jyotsana Sharma and RK Pal

Abstract: Pomegranate (<em>Punica granatum</em>L.), a rapidly emerging commercial fruit crop of India to meet the domestic requirements as well as export demands. It is widely cultivated in India from Jammu &amp; Kashmir to Karnataka, due to its adaptability to the diverse climatic conditions, less natural resource demanding nature and high return on investment. Pomegranate is also an ideal fruit crop for utilizing sub-marginal and degraded lands having pH as high as 8.5 provided there is good drainage. With the need of developing improved cultivars over the existing ones, ICAR-National Research Centre on Pomegranate, Solapur, has collected, conserved and maintained over 350 diverse pomegranate germplasm accessions at its Field Gene Banks. These pomegranate germplasm at Field Gene Banks are maintained with minimum tillage of tree beds following principles of conservation agriculture using brush cutter. The effective utilization of these germplasm resources will be possible only after characterization for each of the desirable characters. In the present study, 25 pomegranate accessions were evaluated for 25 quantitative traits in Randomized Block Design with three replications in <em>mrig bahar</em> of 2016-17. The recorded data has showed the presence of variability for the studied morphological and physico-chemical traits. In ANOVA, significant differences between the germplasm accessions were observed at both 5% and 1% level of significance, indicating adequate variability among the genotypes for all characters. Mean performance of the genotypes for fruit yield attributing traits was observed to be 80.25-207.10g (fruit weight), 4.81-6.61cm (fruit length), 4.94-7.08cm(fruit diameter), 18.77-45.23 g (100 arils weight), 26.65-122.05g(total arils weight), 34.93-82.90g(rind weight), 1.83-3.69 mm (Rind thickness), 8.58-11.4 mm(Aril length), 5.4-7.76 mm(Aril width), 15.86-19.2⁰Brix(TSS), 1.51-3.42% (Acidity), 26.01-52.02%(Fruit Juiciness), 68.4-109.92N (Seed texture).Among all traits, total arils weight(43.55) has showed highest Coefficient of Variation (%) value followed by fruit weight (33.75), rind weight (31.53) and 100 arils weight (29.77). Depending on the breeding objectives, selection can be made among these 25 genotypes for traits of interest to develop improved varieties in pomegranate.

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