Abstract

Sunday E. Aladele

The morphological uniqueness and metroglyph analysis of 50 accessions of West African okra (Abelmoschus caillei (A Chev.) Stevels) were assessed under three agro-ecological environments at Abeokuta, Ibadan and Mokwa in Nigeria. They were grown in a Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications; data were collected on 5 randomly selected plants from each plot. Data on twenty-one agronomic characters were collected; eleven traits were subjected to metroglyph analysis to investigate the extent of distinctiveness among the 50 accessions. The eleven agronomic characters representing the most commonly used in distinguishing between okra genotypes were used to construct a metroglyph chart. All accessions were grouped into seven distinct groups. The index scores ranged from 19.0 to 42.3 with groups I and VII showing the two extremes among the 50 accessions evaluated. The fruit surface of Akure-2-2 and Akure-1-1 were smooth while Akure-2-9 and Akure-2-4 showed slightly prickly fruits. This suggests that accessions from Akure town in Ondo state of Nigeria were domesticated to large extent and possibly are more related. The metroglyph showed that accessions with very poor yield had short plant height, an indication that for West African genotype okra to produce substantial yield, it must possess a strong stem, hence early planting is encouraged.