BREEDING PROCEDURES AND RESULTS ON INDIGENOUS VEGETALBLES: EXAMPLES OF AFRICAN EGGPLANT SOLANUM AETHIOPICUM AND OKRA ABELMOSCHUS SPP

In Senegal, our breeding work initiated in 1984 and 1987 for garden eggs and okra respectively, aimed at specific objectives through procedures that are described: Garden eggs (major fruit and/or leafy vegetables), envolve several non-tuberous Solanum (S. aethiopicum, S. anguivi and S. macrocarpon). The research work which was aimed at breeding for high yielding, uniform and mite resistant varieties has allowed us:

• Firstly, to find out the correlation between leaf hairiness (from S. anguivi Lam and the Gilo and Aculeatum groups of S. aethiopicum) and mite resistance by antixenosis; then new informationon the mendelian inheritance of this attribute facilated its transfer into local varieties of kumba groups, through the pedigree breeding method;
• Secondly, to exploit other interesting attributes (clustered flowers, fruit colour, shape and taste), and succeed gene transfers.

Okra: the characterization and evaluation of about 200 local and introduced accesssions, has provided us with a better knowledge on aspects such as:

• Floral biology of Abelmoschus caillei (from west Africa) and A. esculentus;
• Yield as correlated with its main components, and
• the possibilities of discovering and exploiting heterosis as linked with several characters including yield (value higher than 45%).

On the basis of those findings, a number of open pollinated (OP) and hybrid varieties have been developed

Download Adobe Acrobat Reader (free software to read PDF files)