Chromatographic identification of leaf color characteristics on fine-flavor and bulk cacao as selection indicator
Abstract
A problem encountered in plant breeding process to determine bean color quality of
fine-flavor cocoa is a long selection period. Preliminary results indicated
that the fine-flavor cocoa has a low color reflectance than bulk cocoa. The objective
of this study is to find more applicable and easier method to do the early detection
of fine-flavor cocoa on the breeding population. Detection of the leaf color
haracteristics was done by chromatographic and spectrophotometry analysis.
hromatographic analysis was carried out in Kaliwining Experimental Station, Indonesian
Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute using complete random design consisted
of two types of cocoa; fine-flavor (10 clones) and bulk cocoa (10 clones).
pectrophotometric analysis was conducted at Ma Chung University, Malang, East Java.
Four clones of bulk cocoa and six clones of fine flavor cocoa were used in this
analysis. The results of the study showed that the flush color characteristics of the
fine-flavor cocoa were different from the bulk cocoa characteristics as shown by
the differences in the value of L*, b* and anthocyanin content. Flush characteristic s of
the fine-flavor cocoa had brighter color, more toward green with higher yellow
level, while the bulk cocoa had darker flush, red and lower yellow level. The
color parameter of L* and b* had a higher genetic variation compared with the
environment variation. However, the parameter a* had a higher environmental variation compared with genetic variation. Grouping of fine-flavor cocoa and bulk cocoa
could be done through the detection of flush anthocyanin content, when tendency
of flush anthocyanin content on fine-flavor cocoa was lower than bulk cocoa.
The detection of flush color particularly L* and b* parameters through
hromatographic analysis and anthocyanin content through spectrophotometric analysis
may be used as a criteria for selection the fine flavor cocoa on seedling phase.
