Abstract
<p>Genetic divergence of five mulberry accessions including Embu, Thika, Thailand (<em>M. alba</em>), Kanva-2 and S41 (<em>M. indica</em>) grown in Kenya were examined using twelve phenotypic traits. The assessment of phenotypic traits was done in a field study in two localities, Nairobi and Eldoret. The traits that were significantly different across the mulberry accessions included lamina width and petiole length (P ? 0.01), petiole width and growth height (P ? 0.05), internodes distance and number of branches (P ? 0.001). The Duncan’s Multiple Range Test (DMRT) results were used to generate a dendrogram derived from hierarchical cluster analysis that further partitioned the mulberry accessions into four groups. Embu and Thailand accessions grouped together while S41, Thika and Kanva-2 accessions grouped separately. Embu and Thailand accessions were characterized by fewer numbers of branches than the rest of the accessions. Thika accession had high number of branches and short internode distance. Significant and positive correlations were found between leaf yield traits except in internode distance and number of branches which were significant and negatively correlated. Significant and positive correlations can be utilized since they are rewarding for mulberry leaf yield improvement.</p>
Highlights
Many plant species occupy a variety of contrasting habitats within a limited area and plants must deal with these contrasting environmental conditions
The Duncan’s Multiple Range Test (DMRT) results were used to generate a dendrogram derived from hierarchical cluster analysis that further partitioned the mulberry accessions into four groups
Five mulberry accessions [Embu, Thika, Thailand (M. alba), S41 and Kanva-2 (M. indica)] were evaluated in this study. These were obtained from International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) germplasm site at Nairobi and Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) Thika
Summary
Many plant species occupy a variety of contrasting habitats within a limited area and plants must deal with these contrasting environmental conditions. Mechanisms by which a species may occupy a wide habitat range include reversible modifications to environmental conditions such as deficiency of nutrients, water, soil salinity or alkalinity, temperature and light levels, where plants attain a high degree of phenotypic plasticity (Williamson et al, 1995; Fukui et al, 2000; Vijayan, 2009). Plant species with a wide range of environmental adaptations like mulberry; have been found to exhibit numerous morphological and physiological characteristics (Cordell et al, 1998). Phenotypic plasticity is the ability to develop different phenotypes in response to environmental conditions (Winn, 1996), is heritable and plays an important role in species evolutionary strategy (Agrawal, 2001)
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