FRUIT TRAIT-BASED EVALUATION OF DIALLEL CROSSING COMPATIBILITY OF SIX ELITE CLONES OF COCOA.

Cocoa cultivar development through diallel crosses is one of the national efforts in increasing cocoa productivity in Indonesia. However, these crosses require compatibility evaluation to increase the effectiveness of the crossing. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the best compatibility level of common cocoa clones and to identify the compatibility selection characters based on the characteristics of the fruit produced from the crossings. This study was designed using a full diallel cross design of six Indonesian superior cocoa clones, namely MCC-01, Sulawesi-1, THR, MCC-02, AFQ/MHP-01, and BB-01. Apart from diallel crosses, each clone was also subjected to self-pollination and natural crosses, so that there were 42 types of crosses. Each type of cross was carried out by 50 crosses per plant which was repeated for three plants, resulting in 150 crossing experiments for each type of cross. Observations were made on the 12 characters of the fruit resulted from crosses. The results show that the BB-01 was the clone with the best compatibility, followed by the MCC-01 and Sulawesi-1 clones. Meanwhile, the best selection character in measuring the cross-compatibility characteristic is the seed wet weight per fruit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]