Assessment of the southern highbush blueberry (V. corymbosum interspecific hybrids) germplasm collection for fruit quality attributes

Authors: Babiker, Ebrahiem

Submitted to: American Society of Horticulture Science Meeting
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/3/2023
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Breeding new blueberry cultivars with enhanced fruit quality requires simple, accurate and cost-effective assays to select individual from segregating population. In this study, berry diameter, berry weight, firmness, pH, total polyphenol, total acids, D- glucose, D-fructose, total glucose (sucrose), and total sugars content were quantified in fruit juices of 188 SHB germplasm over two years. Significant variation between years, genotype, and year x genotype interaction were detected for all traits. Glucose and fructose were the predominant sugars in tested genotypes, and they were in a range of 32.14-64.72 and 28.61-69.63 mg/ml respectively. The total sugars content ranged 62.22 to 131.15 mg/ml. Correlation analyses showed strong positive correlation between total sugar content measured with the gallery discrete analyzer and the total soluble solids assessed as Brix. In addition, glucose, fructose, and total glucose showed high and positive correlation between them and with the total sugars content. The titratable acidity was positively correlated with the total acids (r2= 0.60) and strong positive correlation between berry diameter and berry weight. Principal component analysis showed that PC1 explained 44.9% and the major contributing traits for diversity were D-fructose, D-glucose, total glucose, and total sugars. PC2 accounted for 21.2% of the variation and was mainly attributed to berry weight and berry size. Cluster analysis showed that the blueberry genotypes fell into two major groups. Information obtained from this study is critical to identify superior genotypes for future crosses and advance evaluation. In addition, the firmness tester and the discrete analyzer used in this study have shown numerous potentials to improve the efficiency and precision of phenotyping.