CHARACTERIZATION OF INDIAN LANDRACE GERMPLASM AND MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS DESIRABLE FOR DESIGNING A ...

Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench) is a nutrient-dense, medicinally important indigenous pod vegetable with enormous socioeconomic and industrial potential. In tribal areas of Telangana, India, indigenous landraces of okra are commonly produced in traditional, marginal, zero-input, subsistence, and rainfed agro-ecosystems, where only tribals are involved in its production, sales, and consumption. Collection of landrace germplasm and its morphological characterization is to identify novel morphotypes with morphological descriptor states useful for building a customer-driven variety of okra. During 2010-12, the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Regional Station, Rajendranagar collected twenty indigenous okra landraces through special agri-biodiversity surveys in tribal areas of Telangana, India. During the kharif of 2012, these landraces were raised in a randomised block design with three replications and classified with a set of 25 qualitative morphological descriptors at Rajendranagar's Vegetable Research Station. Ward's dendrogram illustrates a wide range of native genetic variety, implying that tribal places are undeniably the most diverse. The absence of duplicates could indicate variances in the landraces' genetic make-up. Plant architecture, level of leaf lobing, pubescence and pigmentation of the stem, leaf, and pod, pod position on main stem, and pod quality attributes all revealed a wide range of morphological traits in the landrace germplasm. The separate and unique morphotypes RNO-202, RNO-213, and RNO-212 have semi-erect pod location on main stem, petal blotch inside alone, and dark green immature pod colour, respectively. Deeply lobed leaves (RNO-204, RNO-205, RNO-206, RNO-208, RNO-212, RNO-213, and RNO-216), as well as prickly pod pubescence (RNO-209 and RNO-215), were found as insect non-preference features. Customers preferred descriptor states for the bulk of the morphological features tested were identified in this study for the landraces RNO-4, RNO-5, RNO-7, and RNO-212. Traditional breeding procedures in okra only allow for the deployment of valuable features from these landraces to existing varieties in order to produce a customer-driven variation.

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