Genotypic and Morphometric Effect on Fruit Oil Content in Seventeen Natural Population of Seabuckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) from Trans-Himalaya

Abstract

Seventeen natural population of Seabuckthorn (SBT), which comprised 187 plants from trans-Himalaya, were studied to find out the variability, genotypic and morphometric effect on fruit oil content. The soft part of the fruit was found to be rich in oil content ranging from 3.16 to 17.3 %. A variation of 1–5.5-folds in oil content among the examined fruit and univariate two-way ANOVA analysis underlines the important role played by genetic background for determining oil content in SBT fruit. At population level, the highest oil content (12.02 %) was observed inTYXwhile the lowest was found in CHO population (6.84 %). The overall mean oil content was 9.74 %. Oil content in berry was significantly correlated with fruit weight (–0.203, p B 0.05), fruit width (–0.195, p B 0.05), tree habit (0.216, p B 0.05), seed weight (–0.151, p B 01), seed length (–0.177, p B 0.01), leaf area (–0.162, p B 0.01), number of leaf per 10 cm2 (–0.151, p B 0.01), secondary branch apex (–0.144, p B 0.01) and mature stem colour (0.186, p B 0.01). However, none of the values were highly significant.