Agronomic Performance and Quality of Local Carrot Population in South Uruguay

Abstract

Carrot (Daucus carota L.) is the fourth vegetable crop in Uruguay. Introduction of imported commercial cultivars with improved root quality caused losses in genetic diversity in local genetic material (PL). However, local landraces are maintained under cultivation and in the interest of growers.The zanahoria del país o criolla (landraces known as ‘carrot of the country’) are used for summer sowings because of their earliness and adaptation to high temperatures. This research studied productive behaviour of collected landraces and improved selections in experiments carried out in different sowing dates during summer, and different locations in South Uruguay. Experiments were done during 2007, 2008 and 2009. Cultivars ‘Kuroda’ and ‘Brasilia’ were included as controls. After performing Principal Component Analysis, marketable yield, total yield, and root color traits were the variables better explaining the differences between landraces and/or cultivars and locations. Year and sowing date effects were responsible for the largest variations among experiments. For experiments sown in March (ending summer), marketable and total yields not significantly differ between landraces and/or cultivars in the interaction locations for years and populations for years, but the interaction landrace location was not significant. PL Rodríguez and the improved CRS population yielded high during the three years. For experiments sown in November (early summer), marketable and total yields did not significantly differ between landraces and/or cultivars, but did differ between locations and years because of a severe drought in the summer 2008-09.