Screening of a local “HABANERO” Chilli variety (NAI MIRIS) for the export market in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Chilli is an important food ingredient in many parts of the world. Chilli varieties found in Sri Lanka with distinguished traditional values are not scientifically screened yet even though it is vital to explore them to the export market. Hence this study was conducted to identify a suitable variety of Nai miris among the locally available varieties based on their vegetative and reproductive characters for the export market. Therefore a study was planned to phenotypic and yield characters of local habanero chilli varieties available in Sri Lanka. This study was conducted at the Dodongolla Agriculture Experiment Station, Kandy. Eight different locally unnamed varieties of Nai miris were collected from the export oriented chilli cultivation field in the up-country region of Sri Lanka. The unnamed varieties were named as A to H. Different qualitative and quantitative characters such as plant height, mature leaf area, canopy width, days for flowering, single fruit weight, mature fruit colour, unripe fruit colour, fruit size, fruit shape and fruit surface appearance were evaluated. Randomized complete block design was used to set the experimental plots and the Minitab software was used to analyze the data. Significant difference was observed at (p<0.05) with 95% Confidence interval among unnamed varieties in quantitative characters. Among the qualitative characters significant differences were observed. But immature fruit colour did not show any significant difference among verities. Varieties named as F and A showed better performance among the eight groups studied. However, variety F showed superior field performance among all varieties. This study found eight unnamed varieties of Habanero “Naimiris” which occurred in Sri Lanka. Further, Variety F showed better qualitative and quantitative performance out of the eight varieties studied. Variety named as A played second best compared to other varieties. The result also implied that there was a positive correlation between the chilli pod size and phenotypic characters such as plant height, single fruit weight and days for flowering.