What Traits Should Be Measured for Biomass in Kenaf?

oleh: Jaeyoung Kim, Gyung Deok Han, Gopi Muthukathan, Renato Rodrogues, Do Yoon Hyun, Seong-Hoon Kim, Ju-Kyung Yu, Jieun Park, Soo-Cheul Yoo, Yong Suk Chung

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-07-01

Deskripsi

Kenaf (<i>Hibiscus cannabinus</i> L.) is widely used as an important industrial crop. It has the potential to act as a sustainable energy provider in the future, and contains beneficial compounds for medical and therapeutic use. However, there are no clear breeding strategies to increase its biomass or leaf volume. Thus, to attain an increase in these parameters, we examined potential key traits such as stem diameter, plant height, and number of nodes to determine the relationship among them. We hypothesized that it would be easier to reduce the amount of time and labor required for breeding if correlations among these parameters are identified. In this study, we found a strong positive correlation between height and number of nodes (Spearman’s Rho = 0.67, <i>p</i> < 0.001) and number of nodes and stem diameter (Spearman’s Rho = 0.65, <i>p</i> < 0.001), but a relatively low correlation (Spearman’s Rho = 0.34, <i>p</i> < 0.01) between height and stem diameter in the later stages of kenaf growth. We suggest that an efficient breeding strategy could be devised according to the breeding purpose, considering the correlations between various individual traits of kenaf.