Growth and yield of 'Amarante' garlic accessions

ABSTRACT Although it is an important vegetable used as a culinary ingredient around the world, there is little information on the characterization of growth and productivity of garlic cv. 'Amarante'. The objective of this study was to evaluate the morphophysiological and productive characteristics of 20 accessions of 'Amarante' garlic from the Vegetable Germplasm Bank of the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (BGH/UFV). The experiment was conducted in the field, in a randomized complete block design, with four replications. During the garlic cycle, plants were evaluated for morphological characteristics, green color intensity, growth analysis, harvest index, and bulb productivity. Data were subjected to analysis of variance, and the means were grouped by the Skott-Knott criteria. The Pearson correlation coefficient was estimated between morphophysiological characteristics and bulb yield. The accessions presented different behavior during the evaluations. BGH 7616 stood out for showing the greatest leaf area, harvest index, dry mass of leaves, pseudostem, bulb, and whole plant, resulting in the greatest total and commercial bulb yield. The highest correlations were found between total yield and leaf area duration (r = 0.7263; p ( 0.01) from 87 to 114 days after planting (DAP) and between total yield and leaf area at 87 DAP (r = 0.6442, p < 0.01). Among the evaluated characteristics, the leaf area at 87 DAP and leaf area duration from 87 to 114 DAP were the morphophysiological characteristics that most influenced the bulb yield in 'Amarante' garlic.