Abstract:
An experiment was conducted at the Pomology Research Field. I-IRC of BAR!,
Gazipur. Bangladesh during the period from September 2011 to February 2012 to
evaluate the morphometric characterization of coconut germplasm. High diversity
were observed in stem structure (0.97), pigmentation of leaf petiole (0.82), bole
category (0.82), number of bunches per palm (0.79), girth at bole (0.77), girth at stem
(0.77), length of II leaf sears (0.77), number of nuts per bunch (0.76) and number of
nuts per palm (0.76). In the infloreseence, variation were high for duration of male
phase (0.88), number of spikelets per infloreseence (0.85), length of central axis
(0.84) while low diversity was observed in duration of female phase (0.47) and in
crown shape (0.43). PCA revealed that days to spathe opening, days to male phase
and number of nuts per palm contributed tbr 66.73% of the observed variation.
Twenty seven entries of coconut were grouped into 7 clusters. The largest cluster VII
included 9 palms, cluster VI, V and II included 8. 4 and 3 palms respectively while
cluster 1. 111 and IV included I palm. The inter-cluster values were maximum in
between clusters III and VII (82.455) while it was minimum in between 11 and IV
(22.351). The intra-cluster distance was maximum in cluster VII (13.210) while the
clusters I, III and IV showed no distance. So, the clusters between ill and VII could
be used as germplasm for
future
breeding.
