Morphological characterization of different genotypes of adenium

Abstract

Adenium is recently gaining popularity as high value pot plant in the ornamental plant industry. Research on Adenium obesum with the basic objective for genetic improvement is being conducted at advance technology centre of soilless system, NAU, Navsari. As a component of breeding work, a study was conducted for morphological characterization of thirty three different genotypes of adenium that comprised of ten selected from local collection and the remaining twenty three from their crosses. Significant variation with regard to plant height, number of leaves, number of flowers, leaf and petal thickness, flower diameter, number of branches, corolla diameter and length, flower longevity, flower weight, flowers per cluster and number of flower flushes in a year were observed. Among all 33 genotypes, considering vegetative traits, Taiwan Dwarf showed significant dwarfness with more number of branches and smaller leaves while plant spread was observed maximum in Cross 14 and number of leaves in Cross 15. Further, fourteen genotypes were found suitable for flowering traits out of which two genotypes (Cross 2 and Cross 23) had flowers with 15 petals and eight genotypes (Cross 5,8,11,14,16,20,21 and dSh) had 10 petals while all others had five petals. Further, Cross 20 for large flower size, Cross 15 for number of flowers per cluster, flower longevity as well as for bearing maximum flowers in a year and Cross 18 and Cross 22 for more number of flower flushes in a year have been identified. These genotypes, can be further exploited for commercial application as well as for breeding work in floriculture industry.