Quantitative Analysis of Relationships Between Panicle Size and Fruit Traits in Litchi (Litchi chinensis Sonn.)

Litchi (Litchi chinensis Sonn.) is an evergreen subtropical fruit tree and important member of family Sapindaceae (Lal et al., 2017a), which has strong mycorrhizal association (Lal and Nath, 2020a). Litchi is evergreen sub-tropical fruit crops which has high nutritive and medicinal values. It is good source of Vitamin-C (Lal, 2018) and phenolics (Lal et al., 2018a). Litchi is highly specific to its climatic requirements particularly low temperature for bumper flowering and fruiting and this is the reason of its restricted cultivation in few countries and limited states in India. Litchi is highly sensitive to change in climatic condition and selective to the environmental factors (Purbey et al., 2019a). Total by-product in litchi is found to the tune of 19.85 to 59.54% in different genotypes fractioning with 6.96 to 22.58% seed and 12.89 to 36.96% pericarp. Litchi Pericarp and seeds are good source of total phenol with 7.5-62.2 mg GAE/g and 23.01– 85.57 mg GAE/g, respectively (Lal et al., 2018a). It produces inflorescence called panicle which is the fruiting body for ensuring the final yield of Art ic le History RECEIVED in 22nd June 2020 RECEIVED in revised form 13th August 2020 ACCEPTED in final form 27th August 2020 Litchi, correlation, panicle, fruit set, improvement