Characterizacion of Figo Cinza banana cultivar in two production cycles/Caracterizacao do cultivar debananeira 'Figo-Cinza' em dois ciclos de producao

The objective of this research was to evaluate the growth and the production characteristics, and to characterize the quality attributes of fruits of Figo Cinza cultivar in two production cycles, 2009 and 2010. Growth characteristics such as plant height, pseudostem circumference, number of actives leaves, number of suckers, number of days between flowering and harvest, were evaluated at the inflorescences emission. Production characteristics, such as bunch weight, number of fruits, number of hands and, number, length and diameter of the fruits of the 2nd bunch were also measured. For fruit quality the following physical and chemical characteristics were analyzed: firmness, pH, titratable acidity and soluble solids. The experimental design was completely randomized with two treatments (cycles), five replications and two plants per plot, and means were compared by Tukey test (P < 0.05). In general the characteristics of growth and production were higher in the second cycle, with 134 days from flowering to harvest, pseudostem circumference of 64.20cm, plant height of 3.82m and bunch weight of 11.83kg. The attributes of quality did not vary between cycles, but the texture was higher in the second cycle with an average of 993.31 gf [cm.sup.-2].