Correlation between morphological characters and estimated bunch weight of the Tropical banana cultivar

Abstract

The objective of this study was to measure and identify the variables that have more influence on bunch weight (BW), and determine a statistical model for predicting yield for the Tropical banana cultivar (cv.). The experiment consisted of a uniformity trial, conducted in Guanambi, Bahia, with a total of 360 plants of the Tropical cultivar YB42-21 (AAAB) in an area of 2,160 m². The vegetative characteristics such as plant height, pseudostem circumference, number of children (suckers) produced and number of green leaves at flowering and harvest, and yield characteristics such as BW, number of hands and fruits, weight of the second hand, length and diameter of the fruit were assessed in two growing seasons. In the evaluation, each plant was considered as a basic unit with an area of 6 m², thus, there was a total of 360 basic units. The variables that correlated with the weight of the bunch are: average fruit weight (FW), weight of the rachis, number of fruits per bunch, fruit length (FL) and number of leaves at harvest. The methodology of multiple linear regression (MLR) was used to estimate bunch weight. The most significant variables that were measured included number of leaves at harvest, number of fruits per bunch, FW, FL, rachis weight (RW) and stalk length (SL), generating the following prediction equation: BW= -5.249 + 0.11NLH + 0.066NFB + 0.046FW + 0.183FL + 2.039RW -0.011LS.

Key words: Musa spp., production, banana, regression model.