Agro-Biological Characteristics of Some Dragon Fruit (Hylocereus spp.) Varieties Grown in North Viet Nam

Abstract

      In the current research, we evaluated growth and some characteristics of four red-fleshed and one white-fleshed dragon fruit varieties. All varieties had high survival rate and grew well in the first year. Among the varieties tested white-fleshed variety T-TQ and red-fleshed variety TL4 had 100% plant survival and reached the collumn peak at 192 and 207 days after planting, respectively. The chlorophyll a, b, a+b content per gram of stem, and a/b ratio of all varieties were very low with 2 - 3 x 10^-2, 5.16 – 6.06 x 10^-2 , and 1.01 – 1.22, respectively. These results indicated that all tested varieties prefer high sunshine. Anatomical analysis of stems showed that all varieties have high water, mineral, and carbohydrate conductance, of which T-TQ and TL4 had highest number of large bundle sheath and total bundle sheath with 41 and 56, respectively.