Mineral relationships in 'maturity bronzing' of banana fruit

Abstract

Two experiments have been conducted to explore the relations between the economically important disorder 'maturity bronzing' and a number of mineral elements. Neither irrigation nor fertilizer treatments had any significant effect on the degree of bronzing. In order to eliminate the highly significant seasonal effect, analyses were carried out on deviations from the appropriate harvest means. The techniques employed were a. stepwise multiple regression, and 6, principal component analysis of the within-harvests correlation matrix, followed by varimax rotation. The results suggest that fertilizer treatments can produce profound changes in the seasonal pattern of mineral content without significantly affecting the incidence of bronzing. When the effect of season is eliminated, bronzing shows a positive association with fruit-skin Cu and leaf Ca, and a negative association with fruit-skin Ca and Mg. However, these associations are relatively weak, and the results suggest that bronzing is not a direct result of mineral imbalance.