Genetic diversity of Garcinia kola heckel from selected states in Nigeria

Abstract

The morphological variability of twenty five accessions of Garcinia kola from seven states in Nigeria (Abia, Anambra, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, Ogun and  Ekiti) were evaluated in this study. The field experiment was laid out in a Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with three replicates. Accession OS4 (Ayekoka) had the best growth characters; plant height (24.08cm), leaf length (10.82cm) and stem girth (4.31cm), while OG3 from Ijebu ode had the best yield related characters for stem wet weight (2.56g), stem dry weight (2.22g), leaf wet weight (1.76g), leaf dry weight (1.23g), shoot wet weight (4.33g) and total wet weight (5.92g). Prin.1 accounted for the highest Eigen vector (9.64) and proportion (0.57) of the total variation. The leaf length and leaf width (r = 0.54) were positively associated, while strong positive correlations ranging between 0.88 and 0.99 were exhibited among the yield related characters. The highest genotypic variance (98.63) and phenotypic variance (394.37) were found in crown width. Stem girth (29.98%) and shoot wet weight (17.55%) had the highest heritability estimates. Therefore, accessions OS4 and OG3 could be further improved and Crown width,  Stem girth, Plant height and Leaf length could be selected characters for Garcinia kola production.

Keywords: Variability, Accessions, Garcinia kola, Characterization and Heritability