Genetic Variability in Nigerian Scarlet Eggplant (Solanum aethiopicum L.) for some morphological Traits

Abstract

Scarlet eggplant (Solanum aethiopicum L.) is an economicaly important annual crop commonly grown in Northern and Southern parts of Nigeria. The study was carried out to evaluate the phenotypic variations among six selected S. aethiopicum accessions. Seeds of six accessions of S. aethiopicum were obtained from National Agency for Conservation of Genetic Resource and Biotechnology (NACGRAB), Ibadan. The seeds were sown in nursery trays and then the seedlings transplanted into 12 litre plastic planting pots. The pots were arranged in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with five replicates. Significant variations were observed in plant height, number of leaves per plant, number of branches per plant and petiole length at (P <0.05); the Pearson's linear correlation co-efficient among these parameters indicated that branches of plant is significantly (P < 0.01) correlated with length of petiole and number of leaves per plant. The highest plant height at maturity (60.50cm) was found in NHGB/09/128, the value was significantly the same (P > 0.05) with NHGB/09/138 but significantly (P< 0.05) different from all the other accessions. The variations observed in terms of the morphological parameters of the garden eggs can be attributed to both environmental and genetic factors of the selected accessions. Length of petiole was significantly negatively correlated with both number of branches (-0.65) and number of leaves per plant (-0.51). Similarly, number of branches per plant was highly significantly correlated with number of leaves per plant (-0.79). The genotypic variances were consistently higher than the environmental variances for all the traits; indicating that the genetic influence had a larger role to play in the phenotypic variances. GCV was highest (99.2) for number of branches per plant, this was followed by length of petiole (70.83), the least (16.87) was found in number of days to flowering. The broad sense heritability was high for all the parameters estimated. This is an indication that such characters are heritable and can be selected for improvement of the crop. It is therefore concluded that variation was established among the accessions of S. aethiopicum. This variations could serve as base-line information for any programme geared towards improvement of the crop in Nigeria.