YIELD, MORPHOLOGICAL AND PHENOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF A COLLECTION OF CIMA DI RAPA (BRASSICA RAPA L.)

In three years, 29 to 109 landraces and cultivars of cima di rapa or broccoli raab (B. rapa L.) collected from farmers and seed suppliers were planted during Autumn in southern Italy (41° North latitude) to evaluate the duration of the growing season, the variability of some morphological and phenologicalcharacters and to assess the stability in yield performance for eleven accessions.

The range of the duration of growing season of the accessions was from 58 to 203 days and four groups of maturity were differentiated.
Plant biomass at harvest varied from 100 to 2087 g, the primary heads weight varied from 12 to 267 g, whereas the seed·plant^-1 varied from 3 to 39 g and 1000-seed weight from 0.86 to 2.26 g.

All characters showed significant differences from one year to another.
Among the cultivars, most stable in terms of yield were ‘C.R. Marzo di Putignano’, ‘Di Gennaio’, ‘Natalina’. Late-maturing accessions consistently averaged greater heads yields; on the contrary seed yield was less than the early one.
A large number of correlations that can also be useful to plant breeders were found among the characters examined.

Considering the large variability shown by the accessions, this study offers the growers the chance of chosing the landraces and cultivars that can supply the market all year around, and gives to seed suppliers the chance of judges the performance potential of their plant materials.

ISHS Brassica Symposium – IX Crucifer Genetics Workshop

G. Damato, V.V. Bianco, R. Pomarici

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1996.407.35