In situ morphological characterization of Ojushte (Brosimum alicastrum Swartz) and its incidence in the selection of germplasm of high nutritional potential in El Salvador

Abstract

With the objective to identify and charaterize morphologically in situ Ojushte trees, to select germplasm with high nutritional potential, it was execute this research from February 2013 to February 2014. This task included trips to places where there are natural populations of this specie in El Salvador: San Pedro, Chirilagua (San Miguel), Nancuchiname Natural Protected Area, San Marcos Lempa (Usulután; La Bermuda, Suchitoto (Cuscatlán); San Laureano, Ciudad Delgado and Universidad de El Salvador (San Salvador); San Isidro and Plan de Amayo Natural Protected Area, Caluco (Sonsonate) and Upatoro (Chalatenango). For the characterization of the trees, qualitative and quantitative characters were taken For the interpretation of the data, the descriptive statistics method and the multivariated analysis were used. For the last one, it was used the software SPSS version 2.0.

A total of 30 Ojushte trees was characterized, when 23 of them resulted with protruding attributes in the chemical characteristics of the seed and protein with a range of 12.25 – 13.99%, iron with 31 – 74.09 mg.l-1 , and zinc with 11.6 – 18.34 mg.l-1 (the ranges were calculated through statistics probability), that can be used in production programs, human feeding and genetic improvement. On the other hand, the quantitative genetic variability of the studied trees was determined by the 42% of the descriptors showing coefficients of variation higher than 23%. The multivariated method allowed to group six components to 23 Ojushte trees where each group had the characteris­tic of showing very similar profiles among them and different from the groups. A sample was taken from them in order to carry out the corresponding nutritional analysis.