CHARACTERIZATION OF INDIAN LANDRACE GERMPLASM AND MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS DESIRABLE FOR DESIGNING A CUSTOMER-DRIVEN VARIETY IN OKRA (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench)

Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench) is an indigenous, nutrient-rich and medicinally valuable pod vegetable with huge socio-economic and industrial potential. Indigenous landraces of okra are commonly grown in the traditional, marginal, zero-input, subsistence and rainfed agro-ecosystems in tribal areas of Telangana, India, where exclusively 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 desirable for designing a customer-driven variety of okra. Twenty indigenous okra landraces were collected through special agri-biodiversity surveys in tribal areas of Telangana, India by National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Regional Station, Rajendranagar during 2010-12. These landraces were raised in a randomized block design with three replications and characterized with a set of 25 qualitative morphological descriptors at Vegetable Research Station, Rajendranagar during kharif, 2012. Ward’s dendrogram depicts broad native genetic diversity suggesting that the tribal areas are indisputably the areas of great diversity. Absence of duplicates may be an indicative of differences in the genetic make-up of the landraces. The landrace germplasm showed a broad variation for morphological traits with desirably distinct morphotypes for plant architecture, depth of leaf lobing, pubescence and pigmentation of the stem, leaf and pod, pod position on main stem and pod quality traits. RNO-202, RNO-213 and RNO-212 were the distinct and unique morphotypes with semi-erect pod position on main stem, petal blotch inside only and dark green immature pod colour, respectively. Landraces with insect non-preference traits like deeply lobed leaves (RNO-204, RNO-205, RNO-206, RNO-208, RNO-212 RNO-213 and RNO-216) and prickly pod pubescence (RNO-209 and RNO-215) were identified. This study enabled the identification of certain landraces RNO-4, RNO-5, RNO-7 and RNO-212 possessing customer preferred descriptor states for the majority of the morphological traits assessed. Deployment of useful traits from these landraces to existing varieties for designing a customer-driven variety is the only way out possible by traditional breeding approaches in okra.