NUMERICAL TAXONOMIC STUDIES ON CACAO (THEOBROMA-CACAO L) IN TRINIDAD

Morphological and biochemical characterization of cacao germplasm has been undertaken in the International Cocoa Genebank, Trinidad (ICG, T) to provide useful information for breeders and other users of the crop and in order to facilitate assessment of the genetic diversity of the collection. Use of the full list of standardized morphological descriptors recommended by the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR) prolongs the process of data collation. The work reported in this paper describes an attempt to develop a much shorter list, which contains the most discriminative or taxonomically useful descriptors. Twelve taxonomically useful quantitative descriptors have been identified, using numerical taxonomic techniques.