SEED PRODUCTION AND PLANT CHARACTERIZATION OF SICILIAN LANDRACES OF BROCCOLI

Broccoli seems to have been domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean area where it began the process of domestication that has given rise to current types and landraces of which many are today grown in south Italy and in Sicily.
We characterised ten landraces of broccoli grown in several areas of Sicily utilising the principal IBPGR descriptor used for this crop and we registered their seed production. Six heads of each landraces, harvested at commercial ripening stage, were collected to detect some characters such as the fresh weight, longitudinal and transverse size, stem diameter, grain size, colour, angle of curvature and the chromatic parameters (CIE L* a* b*) of the main head. With regard to seed production we registered seed yield for each landraces at seed physiological maturity. The landraces showed significant differences especially for some characters, such as fresh weight, height, maximum diameter, angle of curvature, chromatic parameters a* and b* of the main head. Seed production showed a significant variance among the landraces studied and varied from 3.4 to 20.1 q ha^-1.