Observations on relationship of seed content with russeting and fruit physical characteristics of apple cv. Golden Delicious

Abstract

Apple (Malus x domestica Borkh.) seeds during their development in the fruit, produce a sequence of different types of hormones,influencing fruit growth and quality in diverse ways.This way role of seeds can also be postulated in fruit russeting of apple. So this study was framed to identify the relationship of fruit seed content with qualitative factors like length, diameter and weight,and also russeting incidence in apple cv. 'Golden Delicious'. Though seed content of the fruit seemed to influence significantly all the above factors, but could only explain the variability in russeting up to 29%, which indicates that there may be many more factors associated with fruit russeting of 'Golden Delicious' apple. The study indicated that weight, length and fruit diameter were relatively strongly related to the seed content explaining the variability of 43%, 45% and 46% respectively. Moreover, russeting also influenced negatively the fruit size factors in association with seed number.