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Correlation of destructive and non-destructive variables in the establishment of maturity indexes of three cocoa clones in the agroecological zone Valles Interandinos Secos in Colombia

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Cocoa is a crop of great economic importance in the world and the basis for the making of chocolate. It has been shown that the composition of cocoa is in the function of the genotype, the chemical composition of the soil, the age of the tree and the state of maturity of the fruit at the time of harvest. The present research had as objective the establishment of indexes of maturity of cocoa materials in farms producing the Valles Interandinos Secos. Three localities of the department of Huila in the municipalities of Garzón, Algeciras and Rivera were selected; Carring out monitoring three cocoa clones, CCN51, ICS95, TSH565 in contrasting zones with respect to altitude. Destructive and non-destructive variables were studied during fruit development, determining that the maturity index that correlates the main variable during maturation is the days after anthesis. The results show that the cacao clones evaluated describe a simple sigmoidal growth curve, varying in the days after before each of the common phases of growth arrives. According to the destructive and non-destructive variables considered important during fruit maturity, it establish harvesting times for each material, estimating that for the CCN51 and ICS95 harvest it must be harvested at time 4 when they register a range of 191-220 days after anthesis and TSH565 at time 3 with 161-190 days after anthesis