Abstract

The present study was conducted to verify the possible distinct genotypes and material sexes of rambutanusing foliar aspects, enabling the recognition of plants in the early stages of development. Ten productive plants and ten male plants were selected, and they were named according to their arrangement in the orchard. They were evaluated for leaf and leaflet size (length and width in cm), leaflet area (cm²), the number of leaflets, rachis length (cm), length gaps between the leaves (cm), and the color (L*, a*, b*, C* e H*) of the leaflets (superior and inferior surfaces). The data were subjected to an analysis of variance using an F test, and the means were compared using the Scott-Knott test (p<0.05). A cluster analysis of twenty genotypes was performed from the matrix of Euclidean distances. Based on the results obtained in this experiment, it can be concluded that the characteristics related to the color of the leaflets can be a leaf differential aspect in production plants as observed in the plants LB10_F, LB11_F and LB91_F. The multivariate analyses showed that there is low genetic distance between the studied plants; based on the foliar aspects analyzed, it was not possible to identify a discriminatory feature for all plants of the same sex.

Key words: Leaves, leaflets, Nephelium lappaceum, morphology.