Diversity in brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) landraces for morphological traits of evolutionary significance

Abstract

India holds rich diversity of brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) and related species. Besides landraces, many commercial cultivars prevalent in production system also exhibit diverse range of morphological features, particularly fruit characters. We analyzed the extent of diversity among 96 accessions of brinjal with morphologically diverse characters of domestication/ evolutionary significance, representing all agro-ecological regions of the country and 19 accessions of exotic origin. The results could clearly distinguish prickly and non-prickly types of accessions, which could further be classified on the basis of growth habit and fruit characters like shape and colour. This distinctness could be due to more weightage to and high correlation among the prickliness of plant parts i.e. stem, leaves and calyx. The cluster analysis revealed low intra-cluster distances compared to the intercluster distances, suggesting homogenous and heterogenous nature of accessions within and between the clusters respectively. The accessions could not be classified on the basis of geographical groups probably because brinjal from India have all degree of variation and cannot be said to have any distinguishing features. The present study also supports the fact that though the brinjal germplasm shows higher morphological diversity, only a small portion of genome is variable and is responsible for such wide range of morphological diversity. This genetic difference among landraces is potentially relevant in creating variability through hybridization of the contrasting forms.