Abstract
Harumanis is one of the main signatures of Perlis with regards to its delightful taste, pleasant aroma and expensive price. Harumanis authenticity and productivity had become the remarks among the farmers, entrepreneurs, consumers and plant breeders due to the existence of morphological characteristics variation among the fruits and high production cost. Assessment of Harumanis morphological characteristics of natural population and different tree ages may represent a possible source of important characteristics for development and breeding purposes of Harumanis. The aim of this study is to evaluate the morphological variation of Harumanis collected from different location in Perlis and tree age. A total of 150 Harumanis fruits from 50 trees with three different stages of development (young, middle-aged and old) were characterised using 11 traits; 10 quantitative and one qualitative morphological trait. The ANOVA analyses in combination with Dunn's pairwise and Kruskal-Wallis multiple comparison test able to point out the existence of environmental factor and age influence towards the significant different of identified morphological traits except for Total Soluble Solid (TSS) and pulp percentage. Five clusters of 50 Harumanis accessions reflect a grouping pattern which not according to neither geographical region nor age. The result of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) using the first two principal components (PCs) provided a good approximation of the data explaining 84.09% of the total variance which majorly contributed by parameters of weight, fruit dimensional characteristics, peel percentage and hue angle, h. Preliminary screening of important morphological characteristics which contribute to the phenotypic diversity of Harumanis is successfully achieved. The findings can be employed by the plant breeders and farmers for the establishment of standard grading of Harumanis and advancement of breeding crop of Harumanis in future.