Estimating leaf area of prata-type banana plants with lanceolate type leaves

Abstract

Abstract Models for estimating leaf area of bananas found in the literature are not suitable for lanceolate type leaves occurring at the vegetative stage of ratoon suckers dependent of mother plant. The objective was to determine equations for estimating the leaf area of ‘Prata-Anã’ and ‘BRS Platina’ banana plants with lanceolate type leaves. 212 and 164 lanceolate type leaves having 10 cm-wide lamina or less were collected from ‘Prata-Anã’ and ‘BRS Platina’ banana plants of 90 days of age or less, respectively. Width (W), length (L), width/length ratio (WLR), and scanner-measured leaf area (LAscanner) were determined. Using the backward elimination procedure, simple and multiple linear regression equations were fitted to the relationship between leaf dimensions (W, L and WLR) and LAscanner. To evaluate how precise the equations are in predicting leaf area (LApredicted), Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated between LA and LApredictedscanner. The models highly correlated with LAscanner at 1% of significance level. The models are and LALL() = Prata-Anã = - 0,0133624 + 0,000489859**L - 0,00183182 **W and LALL(Platina) 0,00237026 + 0,004781**W - 0,096802** WLR.

Keywords

• Young bananas
• multiple linear regression
• narrow leaves