Agromorphological Characterisation of 29 Accessions of Okra (Abelmoschus spp L.)

Abstract

The West African sub-region is indisputably the region of greatest diversity of Okra (Abelmoschus spp L.) germplasm as it currently hosts some 1,769 accessions of Okra (representing 77.49%) out of the 2, 283 reported world-wide. These are largely uncharacterised, making it practically impossible to ascribe specific attributes to known accessions to facilitate breeding for further improvement to meet specific demands by end-users or industrial-scale production. Twenty six (26) local accessions and three (3) exotic lines of Okra were collected from eight geographic regions of Ghana. Their agro-morphological traits were evaluated under field conditions on the research farm of the Biotechnology and Nuclear Agriculture Research Institute. Hierarchical cluster analysis of results grouped the accessions into two major clusters and subsequently into five sub-clusters based on the qualitative characters studied. The pattern of clustering did not indicate any relationship with geographic origin of collection. The two most divergent accessions were Cs-Legon (local accession) and Clemson spineless (exotic line). There were no duplicates among the accessions which exhibited great variability with respect to all vegetative as well as reproductive characters, except one.

Keywords: Okra; accession; characterisation; phenotypic variation; cluster analysis; genetic similarity index.