Fruit physico-chemical studies of some local wood apple (Limonia acidissima L.) genotypes

Abstract

Considering the importance of wood apple fruit, physico-chemical properties of twelve selected local genotypes have been studied. Within various fruit physical characters such as its shape, size, fruit weight, pulp weight, rind weight and rind thickness, the Genotype 11 and Genotype 4 had found to have maximum values. Fruits were found of the shape of flattened round, round, and oblong. Fruit length and diameter ranged from 7.9cm to 10.7cm and 7.1cm to 9.8cm, respectively. Fruit weight has been ranged from 97.4g to 225.7g, while pulp weight ranged from 50.7g to 117.5g. Average seed weight varied from 6.5g to 37.9g counting 56 to 531.6 numbers of seeds. Though variation in rind thickness was lesser, however, rind weight exhibited from 53.45g to 78.40g. With respect to quality of the fruits, maximum TSS was recorded in Genotype 4 (22.08oBrix) and minimum in Genotype 10 (11.16oBrix). Highest total sugar was noticed in Genotype 9 (2.83%) and reducing sugar was maximum in Genotype 6 (1.73%). Fruits of different genotypes exhibited acidity ranging from 0.70 to 2.33% while ascorbic acid 7.45 to 24.98 mg/ 100g. From the above results it can be concluded that Genotype 4, 6, 11 were very promising in terms of better size, where as Genotype 1 and 6 were very encouraging for fruit quality characters.