Abstract:
Bengkalis Island, Riau Province, is one of the distribution area of durian (Durio
zibethinus Murr.) in Sumatra. The fruit season of durian from Bengkalis Island is
different from other areas in Sumatra. The durian from Bengkalis Island has common characteristics with short storage fruit, that makes the marketing distribution of the fruits are limited in island and affected to the fruits prize. The anatomical structure of pericarp durian was described to compare the anatomical structure of pericarp of the long storage and short storage fruit. A total of seven pericarps (pericarps from long storage fruit cultivar and four pericarps from short storage fruit cultivar) were used to make permanent slides with parrafin embedding method and double staining, 1% safranin and 1% alcian blue. The
pericarps from both cultivars had multiseriat epidermis, great number of secretory cavities, fibers and vascular bundles as indicator of fruit storage life time. The transversal sections showed that long storage fruit pericarp had more number of secretory cavities (37 ± 2/cm2) than short storage fruit pericarp, but smaller in
width fibers and vascular bundles (103 ± 0,76 μm2). The quantitative analysis
result had no significant effect between fruits storage life time and anatomical
characteristics of pericarp. There were twelve characters (nine morphological
characters and six anatomical characters) that correlated each others. The width of
secretory cavities had negative correlation with number of fibers and vascular bundles. The cultivars of durian with high secretory cavities width, also had small number of fibers and vascular bundles. Therefore, a little number secretory cavities, fibers and vascular bundles width indicated that the fruit of durian had a long storage fruit.
