English

Abstract

In the recent decades, Jatropha curcas has received attention as a potential source of bio fuel production in many West African countries. To detect performant accessions for improvement and breeding programmes, the degree of variability of morphological traits and oil content of seeds in a large range of accessions were assessed in this study. The morphological traits and oil content of seed of 40 accessions of J. curcas in Burkina and their genetic values and correlation was calculated. The results show a high variability of morphological traits and oil content of seed. The accession has a significant effect on the morphological traits and oil content of seed whereas, phytogeographic zone has no significant effect. The results permitted identification of accessions with interesting morpho-metric parameters and oil content of seed. The results also show positive and significant correlations between seed width and all the morphological traits and the value of genetic parameters indicate that the high variability in seed traits and oil content can be explain by genetic factors. Also, the highest value of genetic gain was observed for the oil content. As a result, there are good opportunities for selection and improvement of traits and seed oil production through selection. Key words: Jatropha curcas, Burkina, diversity, oil content, seed traits, heritability. &nbsp