Prevalent Variability among Jackfruit Genotypes: An Assessment on Fruit and Flake Characteristics

Abstract

Jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam) belongs to the family Moraceae is a tropical climacteric fruit and known to be the world’s largest edible fruit. Tropical Asia is regarded as origin of jackfruit. India is considered as the mother land of jackfruit with the production of 1.4 million tonnes per year. All parts of jackfruit is consumable, the flesh of jackfruit in unripen stage can be used as vegetable and in fully ripen stage can be used as fruit. Seeds can be used for making curries. Jackfruit bulbs are rich in sugars and contain fair amounts of carotene, protein and minerals. Jackfruit is rich in dietary fiber, which makes it a good bulk laxative. Jacalin content present in seeds has anti-cancer abilities. Finding a jackfruit genotype with high nutritional composition is highly recommended. An experiment was conducted during the year 2022-2033 at Department of Fruit Science, Horticultural College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Periyakulam. Biometric parameters of 25 jackfruits genotypes, collected from diverse locations were evaluated for variations observed in their morphological features and sensory attributes. The results showed that AH 2, AH 7, AH 11 genotypes sampled from Theni, Cuddalore, Pondicherry district exhibited impressive results with high recovery percentage and proved to be economical   in comparison to other genotypes. Based on flake quality AH 2 found to be suitable for table purpose and AH 7, AH 11 for culinary purpose. These findings will come handy in studying the variation among genotypes for future hybridization programme to develop superior varieties.