Morphological traits and fruit quality of Syzygium cumini in natural ecosystem and home garden

Abstract

Syzgiumcuminiis a multipurpose tree found in littoral forest of sandy sea shore vegetation, waste land and home garden. It is an underutilized seasonal fruit in Jaffna and one of the widely used medicinal plants in the treatment of diabetes. Availability of these fruits in markets is restricted by seasonality and peak season is observed during September to November. This study was aimed to evaluate morphology, fruit quality and harvest calendar of Syzgiumcumini, and compare these parameters between the plants found in natural ecosystem and the home garden.

Qualitative morphological traits, leaf blade shape, leaf base shape, leaf colour, leaf apex, leaf arrangement, leaf type, leaf margin and quantitative traits of leaf petiole length, leaf length, leaf breadth and inflorescence length were studied. Among these morphological parameters leaf length, leaf petiole length, and inflorescence length of Syzygiumcuminifrom natural ecosystem were shown statistically significant different (p=0.05) from home garden.

More than 300 fruits were collected from both habitats separately and graded as ripened, mature and non-ripened. Ripened fruits were selected to determine fruit quality. Moisture content, ash content and wax content of fruits collected from natural ecosystem were 85.584%, 3.554%, and 5.284% while these parameters were 82.644%, 2.196%, and 2.05% respectively for fruits collected from home garden. There was significant different (p=0.05) observed for the parameters of total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity (TA), pH, ash, wax and weight of seeds collected from natural ecosystem and home garden. Glossy appearance was observed in fruits collected from natural ecosystem due to high wax content and fruit availability was early in home garden. However, based on the fruit quality parameters including taste, TSS and TA, quality of fruits from both habitats were acceptable. Thus this study suggests the need of growing Syzygiumcumini in home gardens to increase the fruit availability.