Morphological characterization of mango (Mangifera indica L.) cultivars from south-west Nigeria

Abstract

Mango (Mangifera indica L.) is an economically important tropical fruit consumed all over the world. So far, little attention has been paid towards the documentation and characterization of its cultivars. Occupying a unique position among edible fruit crops in Nigeria, information on the exact number of cultivars has not been recorded, leading to a lack of accurately named germplasms and cultivars. To gain phenomenal insight on cultivars' diversity, a morphological technique employing both cluster and principal component analysis were adopted. Morphological characters of seven cultivars collected from National Horticultural Research Institute (NIHORT), Ibadan Nigeria, which includes: leaf length and width, leaf apex, petiole length, fruit length and width, fruit colour and shape were assessed. The results of principal component analysis based on similarity matrix revealed a correlation between leaf length and petiole length, fruit length, width and shape whereas fruit colour exhibited no correlation with any of the other parameters. Cluster and dendrogram analysis based on farthest neighbour, mean character difference and constrained clustering strategy, revealed that mango cultivars are distinctively divided into two groups based on their fruit features: Cluster A comprises Julie, Edward, Palmer, and Kent whereas cluster B comprises Saigon, Madoe and Lipen. This study provides a solid baseline for the further characterization of the different mango cultivars in Nigeria, and will be useful for germplasm management and crop breeding.

Keywords: Mango varieties, Morphometrics, Numerical Taxonomy, Principal Component Analysis