Variability studies on qualitative and quantitative characters of <i>Mangifera indica</i> Linn. (mango) in Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

Mango is one of the edible tree crops cultivated globally. Therefore, this study investigated the variation among 36 accessions of mango collected from genebank and selected locations in Oyo State, Nigeria. The field experiment was conducted in a Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with three replicates. A total of 17 quantitative and 43 qualitative characters were evaluated on mango stem, leaf and fruit. Analysis of hierarchical cluster was performed on the characters scored. The results showed that the fruit length (18.18 cm), fruit weight (751.75 g) and fruit width (18.23 cm) performed best in Big Mango (BIGMCB Acc-1), while Ogbomosho 2 Mango (OGBM Acc-10) had the highest for leaf area (198.79 cm ), petiole length (6.54 cm), lamina length (32.68 cm) and stone width (6.36 cm). Moreover, leaf length had strong positive correlation with leaf width (r= 0.87), petiole length (r= 0.74), internodal length (r= 0.60), plant height (r= 0.71), lamina length (r= 0.99) and leaf area (r= 0.56) at p£0.05. However, BUTM Acc-1 (fruit ground colour), PALMER (pulp colour), BIGMCB Acc-1 (fruit weight), SHRIM Acc-2 (fruit beak), OGBM Acc-3 (stone dry weight), OGBM Acc-8 (fruit thickness) and OGBM Acc-10 (fruit stone width) accessions varied morphologically, thereby enhanced characterization which could be recommended for future breeding of mango.