Growth, maturation and ripening of breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis (Park.) Fosb.
Introduction
Breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis (Park.) Fosb., a native of the Indo-Malayan Archipelago and New Guinea, is commonly cultivated throughout the islands of the Caribbean. Commercially, it is the most important of the three domesticated species of Artocarpus, a genus of over 50 species (Coenen and Barrau, 1961; Barrau, 1976). In the Pacific, there are hundreds of breadfruit cultivars which are grown for food (Ragone, 1989) but only a few of these were introduced to the Caribbean by Bligh in his famous voyage (Powell, 1977) and no more than four or five cultivars are commonly recognised in the Caribbean today (Leakey, 1977; Andrews, 1991).
Breadfruit is consumed unripe and cooked as a starchy staple, equalling or surpassing other tropical crops like sweet potato and cassava in protein and carbohydrate content (Graham and De Bravo, 1981). The fruit has a high post-harvest respiration rate (Biale and Barcus, 1970) but information about its development and maturation is limited. An understanding of the process of fruit development and the identification of suitable maturity indices are important prerequisites for rational development and exploitation of this crop. This study was undertaken to (a) characterise fruit growth patterns and (b) identify possible maturity indices, especially in view of the breadfruit's growing importance as an export crop of the Caribbean (Andrews, 1991).
Section snippets
Plant material
Fruit development was studied during November 1989 through May 1990 using nine breadfruit [Artocarpus altilis (Park.) Fosb.] trees of unknown age, in backyard orchards in St. Michael and St. James, Barbados. The fruit were of the seedless, `white flesh' (uncooked flesh colour) cultivar, most common in Barbados and which has been identified on the basis of photographs and herbarium specimens as approximating the Pacific cultivar `Rare' (D. Ragone, pers. comm.). Young fruit were located by
Fruit growth
Polar and equatorial diameters of breadfruit were measured over a 21-week time course. Fruit growth measured in this way displayed a single sigmoidal curve (Fig. 1(A)) and reached a maximum at a fruit age of 14–15 weeks. However, when weight was monitored (Fig. 1(B)), both fresh and dry weight lagged behind diameter increase and both displayed double sigmoidal growth kinetics. The first growth phase took ca. 9 weeks (Fig. 1(B)), followed by an intervening `resting' phase of about 2 weeks and
Discussion
When the measurement of growth using linear parameters is compared with that assessed by fresh and dry weight, there is an obvious disparity between the growth kinetics (Fig. 1). Whether linear measurements were taken in situ or from fruit harvested for weight determinations, the single sigmoidal growth curve resulted. Thus, the possibility that the differences in growth curves could be attributed to differences in fruit samples was discounted. Furthermore, double sigmoidal growth was again
Acknowledgements
This research was supported under Grant No. 534-0936-G-00-9117, Program in Science and Technology Cooperation, Office of the Science Advisor, U.S. Agency for International Development.
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