Agronomical, Anatomical and Physical Characterisation of Wood Apple ( Limonia acidissima ) Fruit and Seed

wood apple seed. The agronomical features of wood apple were confirmed in Institute of Herbal Science, Plant Anatomy Research Centre, Chennai. The anatomical characteristics of wood apple seeds was determined by polarised light microscopy; physical properties such as seed color, thousand unit mass, dimensions, diameter, sphericity, projected and surface area and aspect ratio were determined and correlated. The result showed that selected wood apple fruit belongs to the family Rutaceae and species L. acidissima. The physical characteristics of wood apple seed such as length, width and thickness was 5.81mm, 3.61mm and 1.80 mm respectively. The longitudinal dimension (length) of the seed was higher than the width and thickness. The average projected area and surface area was found to be 16.47 (±0.23) and 35.46 (±0.60) mm² while the mean volume determined for the seeds was 12.66 (±0.45) mm³. The anatomical characteristics of wood apple seed revealed that the seeds were brown in colour, oblong elliptical in shape and contains two cotyledons which were plano convex. The cells of the cotyledons are thin walled, polyhedral and are darkly strained. The cells contain many cell inclusions, the starch grains being the major content. The wood apple seed coat (Testa) consists of three zones. The total thickness of seed coat was 200-300 μm along the boundary of the middle seed coat occurs a layer of calcium oxalate crystals.