Analysis of Genetic Diversity for Wood Variations in <i>Casuarina equisetifolia</i> Forst.

Ashok Kumar; K. Gurumurthi; Shivani Dobhal

doi:10.36808/if/2020/v146i12/156775

Analysis of Genetic Diversity for Wood Variations in Casuarina equisetifolia Forst.

Authors

Ashok Kumar Forest Research Institute, Kaulagarh Road, Dehradun (Uttarakhand)
K. Gurumurthi Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding, R. S. Puram, Forest Campus, Coimbatore 641 002, Tamil Nadu
Shivani Dobhal College of Horticulture and Forestry, Central Agricultural University, Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36808/if/2020/v146i12/156775

Keywords:

Casuarina equisetifolia, Pulping, Correlation, Clustering.

Abstract

Casuarina equisetifolia Forst. is grown commercially as excellent wood for charcoal and scaffoldings. The exploration of newer avenues for production of pulp wood has now become utmost essential to bridge ever increasing gap between demands and supply of pulp woods, and therefore acceptability of Casuarina equisetifolia as raw material for paper industries was scrutinized, and accordingly a series of genotypes were analyzed for wood anatomical and pulping traits. The pulp yield varied from 45.10 (CHCE890401) to 51.95 (CHCE893004) with an average of 49.34%. The correlation analysis revealed significantly positive correlation between fiber length and fiber diameter (0.52) and kappa number and ash content (0.64), however significantly negative correlation was recorded between fiber diameter and slenderness ratio (-0.96). Based on wood parameters, fifteen genotypes were grouped into six clusters with inter-cluster distance varying from 9.24 to 32.33 and intra-cluster distances from 4.38 to 8.97. Cluster VI was not only found to be the most divergent cluster but also consisted three most suitable pulp producing genotypes. The results clearly indicate that selected genotypes of Casuarina equisetifolia could be grown as an alternate pulp wood that could play a significant role in sustained supply of raw material for paper and pulp industries.

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