USING CHEMICAL MUTAGENS TO DEVELOP NEW GENOTYPES WITH IMPROVED FRUIT QUALITY OF THE ANNA APPLE CULTIVAR

Abstract

A field experiment was carried out during the two successive seasons of 2021 and 2022 in a private farm on Anna apple cultivar (Malus domestica) to study the effect of chemical mutagens (Ethyl methane sulphonate (EMS), Malic hydrazine (MH) and Colchicine) with concentration of (0.05, 0.1and 0.2%) for 24 hours and grafting on Malus root stock on survival percentage after grafting, vegetative growth, fruit quality characteristics and total yield of tree. The chemical mutagens gave the best results in vegetative growth, fruit quality and total yield per tree compared with control. However, control gave the highest value of survival percentage after grafting. Also, studies on relationship and correlation coefficient based on phenotypic dendrograms showed that colchicine 0.05% and colchicine 0.1%, this reflects a similar effect of colchicine at the two concentrations on tested phenotype characteristics.