Evaluation and Phylogeny Study for Elite Mango Strain Grown under Giza Conditions

Abstract

An elite selected mango strain of seed origin and its grafted (six-year-old) were subjected to comparative study with the Alphonso cultivar. This comparative study was performed after phylogeny evaluation with four mango cultivars including Zebda, Ewais, Alphonso and Succari using two molecular markers,rbcL and ITS4 gens barcoding. The barcoding technique proved its ability to detect phylogeny within mango cultivars, as these techniques revealed that the Alphonso cultivar was highly related to the elite mango strain. Morphological and floral characteristics as well as physical and chemical fruit characteristics were evaluated. The results showed that the Elite Strain was earlier in the beginning of flowering (4 week of Feb. th and 1 week of March), the end of flowering (1 week of May) and the date of harvest (3 week of July) than st st rd the Alphonso cv., while the flowering period was the tallest (60.33 and 58.00 days) compared to the Alphonso cv. in both seasons, respectively. Elite Strain had a significantly lower malformation percentage (15.20 and 14.40%) than Alphonso cv. (35.10 and 39.30%) in both seasons, respectively. In regard to initial fruit set, fruit numberper panicle, fruit number per tree and yield per tree, Elite Strain showed the highest values (12.40 and 15.10),(2.23 and 2.66 fruits/panicle), (112.67 and 129.33fruits/tree) and (38.66 and 43.66 kg) in both seasons, respectively, compared to Alphonso cv., which showed the lowest values. Moreover, the calculated biennial bearing index revealed that Elite Strain gave significantly lower percentage (6.05 %), while Alphonso cv. gained the higher percentage (27.42 %). The Elite Strain appeared to be significantly superior to the Alphonso cv. and gavethe highest values in all studied physical and chemical fruit characteristics. These values were as follows: weight (342.33 and 340.67 g), volume (345.00 and 346.67 cm), length (11.60 and 11.76 cm) and diameter of fruit 3 (7.77 and 8.07 cm) and weights of pulp (243.00 and 239.67 g), stone (40.67 and 41.00 g) and peel (58.67 and 60.00 g) and TSS % (18.00 and 17.67 %), reducing sugar (7.91 and 8.01 %), total sugar (19.82 and 20.41 %) and ascorbic acid content (48.80 and 50.47 mg/100g) in both seasons, respectively