A STUDY ON AGRONOMIC TRAITS AND GENETIC POTENTIAL OF SELECTED CACAO GERMPLASM COLLECTION OF COCOA RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTRE BAGAN DATUK, PERAK
Authors: Nuraziawati M. Y., Ghizan S. , Rita M.A, Khairul Bariah S., Albert L., Haya R.and Aizat J.
Journal Issue: Malaysian Cocoa Journal, Volume 14/2022
Keywords: Cacao, germplasm, broad-sense heritability, genotypes, variation
Published On: 10/05/2022
Abstract
Malaysian Cocoa Board is the solely agency who responsible for collecting, evaluating and conserving diverse cacao varieties also known as germplasm for various field of study especially in cacao breeding. As an economic importance crop worldwide, enhancement of cacao genetic materials is very crucial in the process of superior planting materials development and crop improvement. In this paper, fourteen traits such as pod length, pod width, pod weight, husk weight, wet bean weight with mucilage, dry bean weight with mucilage, number of bean, wet placenta weight, dry placenta weight, brix, average dry bean weight (ADBW), pod value (PV), bean conversion rate (BCR) and cocoa butter content were evaluated for eight selected cacao genotypes of the Malaysian Cocoa Board’s collection in Cocoa Research and Development Centre, Bagan Datuk, Perak. ANOVA result revealed that 64% of the study traits were highly effected significantly by the genotypes at P < 0.01 and 29% effected significantly at P < 0.05. Total genetic variation among the eight selected genotypes was accounted for by three Principal Component (PC) axes which ranging from 48.73% (PC1) to 32.47% (PC3). Broad-sense heritability range of 32.59% to 74.63% was observed and 50% of the traits showed high broad-sense heritability. The eight genotype were clustered into two clusters according to studied traits.