Variation in plant morphology of Garcinia atroviridis (Asam gelugor)

Garcinia atroviridis Griff ex T. Anders commonly known as asam gelugor is an underutilized fruit of the family Guttiferae. Garcinia atroviridis is native to Peninsular Malaysia. It is distributed from Malaysia to Thailand, Myanmar and Assam (India), and is also found in the Philippines. In Malaysia, asam gelugor is found cultivated in the home gardens or small orchards. Some of the tree species can still be found in lowland forest. Asam gelugor are found mostly in the humid tropics as second storey trees and adapted to shade. A total of 2,846 trees were documented and Garcinia atroviridis were spread all over Malaysia covering 54 districts. Asam gelugor trees are usually planted from seeds and showing variations mainly in fruit characters. The tree is large with its trunk fluted at the base. The canopies were basically either pyramidal, conical, oblong, oval or irregular. The branches that arose from main trunk of Garcinia atroviridis usually dense. The bark colour of Garcinia atroviridis trunk are dark brown, greyish brown, brown, grey, greenish brown, light brown and black. The tree produces large orange-yellow colour fruits, nearly round, fluted with ribs and grooves. Fruit shape varies from ovoid to ovoid-oblong; and from spherical to flattened. From the study, mean values of individual fruit weight varied widely from 176.3g in Acc. no. 40 to 744.1g in Acc. no.69. The average fruit width slightly varied from 5.73cm (Acc. no. 18) to 16.13cm (Acc. no. 14). The thickness of rind of fruit showed a slightly variation among the accessions studied. The leaves mostly were oblong, few elliptic and some with obovate and oblong shapes. In Peninsular Malaysia, asam gelugor cultivation was considered as a moderately common, grown in home gardens and orchards; and had quite a popular ranking based on its popularity to households. The trees are able to provide food, nutrition as well as generate income to the farmers. In view of this, MARDI has carried out a survey on the distribution and genetic diversity of asam gelugor throughout the country.