Published in Scientific Papers. Series A. Agronomy, Vol. LXIV, Issue 2
Written by Abdelhamid BENMOUMOU, Saïd EL MADIDI
Citrullus colocynthis is a perennial her baceous species in the Cucurbitaceae family widely distributed in the Sahara Arabian desert in Africa and the Mediterranean region. This plant has a natural adaptation to drought and several studies have reported that this plant has a great potential for adaptation to drought with a tolerance to water deficit. C. colocynthis has been garnering interest in recent times as a potential biodiesel feed stockcrop due to its high seed oil content. The variability of seed and oil yields were investigated for 12 accessions collected in different localities in Morocco and analyze during two consecutive trials. The measured traits are: seed number (SN), seed weight (SW), weight of 100 seeds (W100), seed oil content (OC), seeds yield (SY) and oil yield (OY). The seed oil content ranging between 17 and 24% of seed weight. The extrapolated seed yield among the accessions ranged from 156 to 816 kg/ha, with an overall mean of 413 kg/ha. The oil yield varied between 35 to 172 kg/ha. The results of anova (GLM) show significant and very highly significant differences between the accessions according to the characters measured.
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