Sibani Gogoi, Bipin Khangia and Kartik Baruah
of diversity. In India the major banana growing states are Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam. Assam ranks sixth in area and ninth in production, producing 857.72 thousand MT of banana annually from an area of 50.81 thousand hectares with a productivity of 16.9 MT/ha (Annon, 2014).
Cultivated banana belongs to section Eumusa and were formed by interspeci!c crosses involving two dip- loid ancestor species M. acuminata (genome AA) and M. balbisiana (genome BB) originated in South East Asia stretching from India to Malaysia (Stover and Sim- monds,1987). Botanically, banana is a monocotyledo- nous, monoecious, monocarpic, mesophytic, perennial plant belonging to the family Musaceae. Unlike most other fruits, banana is a herbaceous, giant, perennial herb that consists of a rhizome and a pseudostem (Robinson, 1996). Banana is one of the biggest single trade items in international fruit trade. It is considered as a wholesome fruit as it provides a more balanced diet containing suf- !cient amount of carbohydrates and most nourishing of all the fruits which contains nearly all the essential nutrients including minerals, vitamins and has several medicinal properties. In many parts of India including Assam both plant and fruits are used extensively in all auspicious occasions such as wedding, festivals and also use for worship. Apart from fresh consumption as des- sert fruit, some types are also used for culinary purpose.
Assam is naturally blessed with suitable agro-edapho climatic conditions for growing banana and a large numbers of banana cultivars are grown in almost all the agro climatic zones of Assam. The banana cultivars differ among themselves with respect to the quality parameters as well as the possible economic return after obtaining the expected yield from these cultivars. However, infor- mation on the fruit quality and economic returns of the commercial cultivars are scanty and not well docu- mented. Thus, it seems to be of utmost importance to carry out a research work pertaining to the evaluation of the quality attributes and possible threshold economic return obtainable from growing these cultivars. Keep- ing in view, the above consideration, the present experi- ment was conducted to study the quality parameters and the economic feasibility of nine promising cultivars of banana under Assam condition.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The experiment was conducted in the experimental !eld, Department of Horticulture, Assam Agricultural Univer- sity, Jorhat with nine cultivars viz., Karpurachakkarakeli (AAB), Champa (AAB), Rasthali (AAB), Barjahaji (AAA), Jahaji (AAA), Kachkal (ABB), Malbhog (AAB), Gandevi
(AAA)and Rajapuri (AAB). The experiment was laid out in Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replica- tions. Sword suckers with well developed rhizome were planted at a spacing 1.8 m x 1.8 m. The recommended cultural practices were adopted to raise a successful crop.
Fruit quality analysis was performed by taking a fruit sample from the second hand. Total soluble solid (TSS) was determined by the help of a hand refractometer. Titrable acidity, reducing sugar, total sugar and non- reducing sugar were determined adopting the standard methods of A.O.A.C. (1975). Sugar-acid ratio was calcu- lated by dividing the mean of total sugar by the mean of titrable acidity. Pulp-peel ratio was calculated by divid- ing the mean pulp weight by the mean of peel weight.
The expenditure both recurring and non-recurring, required for the crop during cropping period were com- puted based on the investment of charges of !eld prepa- ration, planting materials, input, plant protection and relevant intercultural operations etc. Gross return was calculated by multiplying the marketable yield with that of sale price. Net return was calculated by subtracting gross expenditure from the gross return on per hectare basis. Bene!t-cost ratio was computed from the value of net return and gross expenditure.
The data obtained from different observations dur- ing !eld experimentation and laboratory determination were subjected to the analysis of variance. Signi!cance and non-signi!cance of the variance due to treatment effects was determined by calculating ‘F’ values as described by Panse and Sukhatme (1985).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The cultivars exhibited signi!cant effect on the quality of fruit (Table1). Refractometer reading gave the highest TSS value in ‘Malbhog’ (22.13°B) while the lowest value was recorded in ‘Gandevi’ (17.40°B). Titrable acidity gives a measure of the amount of acid present. Acids make an important contribution to the post-harvest quality of the fruit as taste is mainly a balance between the sugar and acid contents. Among the cultivars, titrable acidity was found statistically signi!cant and the highest value was recorded in ‘Rasthali’ (0.59%) while the lowest was recorded in ‘Jahaji’ (0.28%). Decreasing titrable acidity could be attributed to the dilution effect on acidity and also due to better conversion of acids into sugar. Similar results were found by Singh and Uma (1996) in banana. In terms of ascorbic acid ‘Barjahaji’ recorded the highest value (5.11 mg/100g) whereas lowest value was recorded in ‘Rajapuri’ (2.55 mg/100g) which was statistically at par with ‘Gandevi’ (2.61 mg/100g) and ‘Kachkal’ (2.78 mg/100g). The increase in ascorbic acid content of fruit may be due to perpetual synthesis of glucose-6-phosphate
