Caracterização morfológica de bacurizeiro (Platonia insignis Mart.) na região de transição maranhense

Abstract

The Amazon and Cerrado biomes in Brazil have a great diversity of native fruit trees, most with good prospects for economic exploitation, especially the bacuri tree (Platonia insignis Mart.). The exploitation of this fruit is still made in an extractive way, and there is little scientific information about its genetic diversity, therefore, it is essential to conduct studies that contribute to direct strategies that favor its conservation, advances in the domestication process, and in genetic improvement. The objectives of this work were: (1) to study the genetic divergence among 14 genotypes from the transition region between Amazonia and Cerrado in Maranhão; (2) to study the distribution of genetic variability in ten bacurizo populations, using ISSR markers. For the analyses related to plant phenotypes, 12 characters related to fruit morphology were evaluated; shape, peel thickness, fruit mass, seed mass, number of parthenocarpic segments, pulp mass, number of seeds per fruit, longitudinal diameter, transverse diameter, pulp yield, peel yield, seed yield. Regarding the evaluation of diversity through morphological descriptors, genetic diversity was observed among the genotypes studied, indicating that it is possible to obtain important genetic gains through selection. The characteristics of the genotypes that contributed most to the diversity among the genotypes analyzed were: peel mass, pulp mass, longitudinal and transversal diameters suggesting success in the selection of genotypes, the best materials were the genotypes from Nova Olinda, (Codó; Bom Jesus 2), Santa Rita, (Bequimão; Victória 2) and (São Luís; Santa Bárbara).