Phenotypic characterization of selected African eggplant accessions collected from a number of African countries

Abstract

Africa is home to a variety of Solanaceae crops including the African eggplant used as food and for income generation. However, African eggplant has not been characterized to show their diversity to inform crop improvement programs. This study was carried out to evaluate the morphological diversity of the African eggplants. Sixty-seven African eggplants accessions collected from the Asian Vegetable Research and development center- regional center for Africa (AVRDC- RCA) in Arusha Tanzania were planted using complete random block design in 18 replicates. The morphological data collected was subjected to Genstat’s univariate analysis, bivariate, multivariate and Darwin6 software for statistical analysis. The dendogram grouped the accessions into two main clusters with majority falling in cluster 2 revealing a narrow genetic base in the cluster. Many singletons formed suggest divergent genetic background hence useful for out crossing to other accessions. Clustering was contributed by the plant growth habit, fruit shape and fruit colour. Cluster 1 was constituted by accessions exhibiting prostrate and very prostrate growth habit while cluster 2 was composed of intermediate, tall and very tall. Overlapping accessions in the biplot revealed close relationship between many of the accessions studied as well as a considerably wide diversity for a few accessions. Accessions RV100328, RV100194 and RV100346 clustered far from the rest showing high variation based on morphological characters. Analysis of variance showed significant phenotypic variations in the accessions at P＜0.05. Eight of the 14 Principal component (PC) analysis were significant accounting for 70.6% variation. PC-1 accounted for 16.02 %whereas PC-2 accounted for 12.29%. The findings of this study reveal significant variation among the selected African eggplant mainly contributed by plant height, leaf blade length, leaf blade width and fruit width. Substantial variation among the 67 accessions was also observed in fruit colour, fruit shape, fruit texture, leaf base and leaf lade colour.