Breeding of a new Pisang Awak variety ‘Qingfen No.1’ with good quality and high yield

Abstract:‘Qingfen No. 1’(Musa spp. ABB group) is a new Pisang Awak variety of banana, whichwas achieved by mutation breeding strategy from the parental variety‘Zhongfen No. 1’, based on somaclonalvariation for superior agronomic traits in tissue culture plantlets. The new variety was initiallyselected in the year of 2010, when an individual plant derived from‘Zhongfen No.1’tissue cultureplantlets, was supposed to be a variant. The variant plant exhibited more robust pseudostem, yellowgreenleaf sheath and spreading leaf habit in field, which was apparently different from its parental variety‘Zhongfen No. 1’(purplish-red leaf sheath). Afterwards, the suckers of this potential superior variantwere maintained and used for in vitro micropropagation, which then rapidly produced large scale tissueculture plantlets for further investigation. After two consecutive years observation of biological characteristicsin the field from 2011 to 2012, the distinctiveness of the color on leaf sheath was stable andcould be one of the inherited traits on the variant. The comparative evaluation in multi- positions i.e.,Guangzhou, Zhongshan, and Huizhou, was carried out during the years of 2013 to 2015, to confirm thedistinctiveness between the variant and the parental variety‘Zhongfen No. 1’. We subsequently performeda productive evaluation for yield from the years of 2015 to 2017 in multiple banana production regions i.e., in Huizhou, Jiangmen, Zengcheng and others. From the overall field evaluation results, thissuperior variant is a robust variety with tall height (412.2 cm), long and cylindrical bunch (72.5 cm inlength and 128.3 cm in circumference), uniform hands with straight fingers (on average, 8 hands perbunch with 18 fingers per hand, thus 145 fingers in total), constituting its high commercial value traitsfor banana production. The pulp color at maturity is creamy white, the edible part is 75.6% of the entirefruit, the taste is sweet- smelling, with the determined fruit quality parameters, i.e., TSS (28.0%), TA(0.33%), SS (23.1%), RS (22.3%), Vc (13.2 mg· 100 g^-1). Moreover, the production period of the variantis around 14-15 months for the first cycle, the average bunch weight is 30.5 kg, so that the yield for666.7 m2 is approximately 3 500 kg. Besides, this variant has high resistance to leaf spot disease, bunchtop virus disease and black freckle disease, however it is susceptible to Fusarium wilt race 1. It was concludedthat, this variant is a potential superior variety for banana production extension in Fusarium-freesoil land, in Guangdong province or in similar ecological condition from tropical and subtropical areas.Hence,