Caracterização de acessos de cajueiro do banco de germoplasma da Embrapa, coletados nos municípios de Pacajus e Maranguape-CE

Abstract

The cashew (Anacardium occidentale) is a fruit tree of great social and economic importance in northeastern of Brazil and it is particularly explored as almond, pseudo fruit and the liquid from cashew nut-LCC. Due to its importance, Embrapa maintains a germplasm bank of cashew collect from different Brazilian regions. The objective of this study was to characterize morphologically accessions of the bank, collected in Pacajus and Maranguape cities, for documentation purposes and facilitating the use of the germplasm. It were used 55 accessions and the aspects evaluated were: plant height, canopy diameter, stem diameter, limbo format, pseudo fruit format, pseudo fruit color, texture, vitamin C, total titratable acidity, pH, soluble solids content and relation soluble solids content/acidity (SS/ATT), and the incidence of diseases of cashew: powdery mildew, anthracnose, resinose and black mold. For plant height, about 76% of the accessions were classified as tall with an average of 9,18m, 24% were semi-tall averaging 5,43m high, and the canopy diameter of the trees varied from 5.3 to 21 m. The stem diameter average observed was 51,18m, and the biggest diameter was 82mm (B1532). Regarding the limbo format, 32.7% of accessions presented the elliptical shape and in relation to the pseudo fruit format 5.5% had the piriformis format. About pseudo fruit color, 33.4% were yellow and 22.2% were light orange. About vitamin C content, there was a variation of the 370,58mg to 92.33/100g, the highest content of vitamin C, observed in the accession B 1515, but other accessions showed higher values than in the ideal range (80 mg/100g) suggested for consumption. The brix content range from 8, 97 to 18, 16, and among the accessions, B1515 (18, 16Brix) had a remarkable content. About the relation of SS/ATT, the values ranged from 71.42 to 25.13. About diseases occurrence, only accession B1537 was free of powdery mildew symptoms and 20% of the accessions of did not show anthracnose symptoms. Regarding the resinoseoccurrence, only the accession B1532 and B1544 showed symptoms.