Table 7.

Pearson correlation between climatic variables and russeting for ‘Apple’ mango fruits grown at ten sites throughout Kenya. Climatic variables include rainfall amount, number (n) of rainy days, relative humidity, maximum, minimum, and mean daily temperatures, and heat sum. Heat sum is the sum of mean temperatures above the base temperature of 16 °C. Number of cold nights is the sum of the number of days when the minimum temperature was less than 16 °C. The growth season was divided into three periods of equal duration at each site (early, middle, and late phases). “Cumulative” refers to the entire growth period. Climatic data were obtained from the NASA Langley Research Centre (LaRC) POWER Project.

Weather Parameter	Pearson Coefficients of Correlation (r)
	Time Period
	Early	Middle	Late	Cumulative
Rainfall (mm)	0.39 ns z	0.44 ns	0.26 ns	0.60 ns
Rainy days (n)	0.66 *	0.67 *	0.79 **	0.90 ***
Relative humidity (%)	−0.27 ns	0.11 ns	0.08 ns	−0.05 ns
Maximum temperature (°C)	−0.56 ns	−0.71 *	−0.85 **	−0.74 *
Minimum temperature (°C)	−0.94 ***	−0.93 ***	−0.94 ***	−0.94 ***
Mean temperature (°C)	−0.96 ***	−0.95 ***	−0.96 ***	−0.96 ***
Heat sum (°Cd)	−0.57 ns	−0.67 *	−0.72 *	−0.67 *
Dew point temperature (°C)	−0.88 ***	−0.85 **	−0.91 ***	−0.92 ***
Cold nights (n)	0.88 ***	0.73 *	0.63 ns	0.84 **

^z Correlation coefficients followed by *, **, and *** were significant at p ≤ 0.05, p ≤ 0.01, and p ≤ 0.001, respectively. Correlation coefficients followed by ns were not significant (p > 0.05). The number of fruits inspected at anyone site was 210.