Morphological characterization of ber germplasm

Abstract

The twelve accessions of germplasm of ber, maintained in the field gene bank of Regional Station of ICARNational Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources at Jodhpur were characterized and compared on the basis of morphological and fruits characters viz., growth habit, foliage, thorn, fruits and presence or absence of stone in the fruits for the four subsequent years (2013-14 to 2016-17). A landrace collected from Maharashtra state was recorded with a unique trait i.e., the stone part of the fruit was merely absent and small, soft and shriveled edible seeds were present, thus this landrace is named as stoneless ber, whereas, in all other land races and cultivars the large sized stone is present. It is observed that 97-99 % part of the fruit of the stoneless ber is made up of edible fleshy pulp. While in other landraces of ber only 10 to 40 % part of the fruit was made up of edible pulp and rest of the part (60-90 %) of the fruit is made up of stone that is inedible. The germplasm revealed wide range of diversity for different morphological characters as they have been collected from different parts of the country.