Guava is a superfruit with a high amount of nutrients and phytochemical compounds. The colored guava is known for its nutritional value, as it is rich in antioxidants and reduces the risk of certain chronic diseases. Thus, the current study was conducted at the ICAR‐Indian Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru, to assess the variability in quality, phytochemicals, and color traits in intervarietal progenies (“Purple local × Arka Poorna”) of guava. A wide range of variability for all the quality and phytochemical traits likes fruit weight (FW), outer pulp thickness (OPT), pulp per cent (PP), seed hardiness (SH), total soluble solids (TSS), titratable acidity (TA), vitamin C (VIT‐C), total carotenoids (TC), lycopene (LY), total anthocyanins (TAC), total flavonoids (TF), total antioxidants (TAA), and total phenols (TP) along with peel and pulp color was observed in intervarietal progenies. The coefficient of variation values for quality traits ranged from 0.67% to 89.79%. The cluster analysis grouped all the colored pulp with higher FW, OPT, PP, and high phytochemical traits progenies in cluster IV and II, respectively. The principal component analysis (PCA) explained 75.8% of total variance for all the traits studied in the intervarietal progenies. The colored (pulp/peel) progenies were found to be superior for all the quality traits evaluated and meeting the consumer demand for high nutritional value. Hence, the identified superior colored (pulp/peel) progenies namely PLAP8‐28, PLAP9‐13, PLAP11‐1, PLAP11‐19, PLAP11‐24, PLAP13‐20, PLAP8‐20, and PLAP8‐24 could be exploited in the crop improvement program.
M. et al. (2026) studied this question.