Jacob O. Popoola, Oluwakemi A. Bello and Olawole O. Obembe
Keywords: Moringa oleifera, phenotypic variation, agro-morphometric, cluster analysis
Abstract: Phenotypic characterization of plant species is the basis for selection, conservation as well as improvement. Moringa oleifera (Lam.) is commonly grown as multi-purpose medicinal and leafy vegetable crop in Nigeria. This study evaluated phenotypic intraspecific variations among 40 accessions of M. oleifera collected from different agro-ecological zones. A total of 30 morphometric traits involving qualitative and quantitative vegetative, floral, fruit/pod and seed traits, seed set and germination percentages were combined for the analyses. Descriptive statistics, variance analysis, correlation coefficient, principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) were used to evaluate the intraspecific variability. The accessions showed marked differences in floral, fruit pod and seed characters analyzed. Accessions edN037 (71 days), osN024 (73 days), ogN028 (74 days), oyN003 (75 days) and abN059 (76 days) were identified as early maturing accessions. Correlation coefficients r ? 0.70 were high and significant for reproductive characters. The PCA and CA generated similar results. The first five principal component axes explained 61.40% of the total variation with PC1 (23.92%) and PC2 (14.19%) contributing 38.11% of the total variation. The CA showed that the degree of intraspecific similarity was high (66.82%) based on Euclidean similarity index. Nevertheless, four clusters were formed indicating intraspecific phenotypic dissimilarity among the 40 accessions especially with the separation of accessions that were collected from similar environments. The phenotypic variations could be explored for utilization, conservation and for future genetic improvement by selection of accessions with promising agronomic characters.
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