Agromorphological Characterization of Solanum aethiopicum Accessions from the «Kumba» Group, Cultivated in Burkina Faso

Solanum aethiopicum is one of the leafy vegetables with enormous economic and food potential. Unfortunately, it remains neglected by the breeding programs for Solanum melongena to such an extent that few studies have been carried out on its genetic variability in Burkina Faso. The present study is a contribution to a better knowledge of the agromorphological variability of a collection of 47 cultivars of the group «Kumba» from 13 provinces, in order to define strategies for conservation, selection and improvement of this species. The plant material was evaluated using 22 agromorphological descriptors including 16 quantitative and six qualitative. The experiment took place at the station of Gampela in rainy season following a device in blocks of Fisher completely randomized to three repetitions. Data analysis was performed using the software Genstat 2012 and XLstat 7.1 version 2014. The results reveal that 55.32% of accessions have green stems, compared to 25.53% purple and 19.15% purple. The analysis of variance shows that only the diameter of the stem does not show a significant difference at the p < 0,01 threshold. Strong correlations were observed between plant height and length, diameter and fruit weight parameters. The main component analysis also shows that the variable “number of fruits per plant” is opposite to the variables weight and diameter of the fruit. The hierarchical ascending classification allowed to distinguish two types of plants. These are plants with a relatively early cycle, medium vegetative development and producing many small fruits and those that are late with an important vegetative development and producing a small number of large fruits. Thus, hybridization of these two groups of plants could provide opportunities to obtain large-fruited individuals with high yields that meet the needs of producers.