Development of Hybrids in Guava (Psidium guajava L.) for Fruit Quality Traits

Abstract

Guava (Psidium guajava L.), known as the ‘Apple of the tropics’ or ‘Poor man’s fruit’ is a fruit crop of family Myrtaceae that has gained prominence in India owing to its high nutritive value, pleasant aroma, flavour and availability at moderate prices. Besides, it is one of the hardiest fruit crops with high nutritional quality. Development of varieties and hybrids suitable for table and processing purposes with the desirable combination of traits viz., high yielding types with superior fruit quality, uniform shape, proper size, attractive skin and pulp colour, few soft seeds and good keeping quality is needed. Hybridization programme was conducted at the College of Horticulture, Bengaluru using different guava genotypes with superior fruit quality traits as parents and a total of 10 crosses were performed. Out of ten crosses performed, fruit set percentage was found to be highest in the cross L-49 x Purple Guava (80.00%), fruit morpho-physical parameters viz., maximum fruit length, fruit width and fruit weight of 7.10 cm, 8.35 cm and 286.72 g, respectively was recorded in the cross Allahabad Safeda x Arka Kiran (1). Yellow green peel colour dominated over greyed yellow peel (L-49 x Purple Guava and Allahabad Safeda x Purple Guava). The crosses Arka Kiran x White local and Arka Kiran x L-49 were having pink pulp. The minimum number of seeds per fruit were noted in the cross L-49 x Purple Guava (52.00). Thus these crosses were found to be superior over other crosses which, can be further evaluated for their hybrid performance and used in future crop improvement programmes as guava faces breeding challenges of developing soft seeded hybrids as it is a major consumer preference to enhance its consumption and production.