Abstract
Morphological field evaluation to characterize the phenotypical features of 33 Bambara groundnut accessions was carried out at the Teaching and Research Farm of Department of Crop Science and Technology, Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Imo State; Nigeria. Qualitative morphological descriptors showed a varying degree of variation across the Bambara groundnut collections evaluated. In relation to other descriptors, ground colour of eye displayed the highest range of variation, while eye pattern of the accessions recorded the least discriminating feature. The accessions were resolved into five groups based on similarities on morphological characters and not on geographical place of origin.
Highlights
In conventional and modern breeding programme for crop improvement, the major factor that determines its success is the availability of variation within and between species
Natural variations exist in both wild and cultivated plants. Several scholars in their different studies have reported the importance of screening lines for the purpose of identification and classification of natural occurring variations in crop species (Ariyo and Odulaja, 1991; Aliero and Morakinyo, 2001; Ntundu et al, 2004; Santos et al, 2012; Afolayan et al, 2014)
Crop species are characterised in which the differences that exist in species are used to describe germplasm of crop species
Summary
In conventional and modern breeding programme for crop improvement, the major factor that determines its success is the availability of variation within and between species (intra and interspecific variations). The use of other methods of diversity analysis (as it is currently being practiced) like biochemical, cytological, and molecular markers have not substituted phenotypic morphological characterization of collections (William et al.,1990; Afolayan et al, 2014), rather they play a complimentary role. This is because phenotypic morphological markers expose heritable characters to the eye in the natural crop environment and are highly discriminating. This study was set up to identify and classify morphological variation that exist in Bambara groundnut with a view to establish the pattern of variation and to cluster the collections in groups
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