Author(s): Anwanobong Jonathan Eshiet and Ebiamadon Andi Brisibe
Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench) is an important all-season food crop widely grown throughout the tropical and semi-temperate regions of the world, for its tender green pods and leaves. Unfortunately, the crop rarely reaches its yield potential in most of these areas, primarily due to the use of unimproved cultivars and limited utilization of fertilizers and irrigation inputs. In addition, investments in breeding programmes that are aimed at enhancing its yield in the field are very limited. In the current study, therefore, some agronomic traits and yield components of four cultivars of okra (NHAe-47-4, V35, LD88 and a local variety), were compared in a field plot to aid in the development of selection strategies that could be used for okra improvement. The experiment was laid out in a completely randomized design with each accession, which served as the main factor, replicated five times and grown to maturity. Data collected from the four varieties included number of days to seedling emergence, number of days to flowering, plant height at flowering, number of leaves at flowering, mean number of pods per plant, pod length, mean number of seeds per pod, and mean weight of one hundred seeds, which were individually subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA) test. The results demonstrated that the okra varieties differed significantly (p<0.05) in number of days to flowering (71.75-112 days), plant height at flowering (49.75-128 cm), number of leaves at flowering (7.50- 19.33), pod length (3.23-6.83 cm) and one hundred seed weight (3.87-4.42g). There were, however, no significant (p>0.05) differences between the cultivars in terms of certain yield characters including average number of pods and average number of seeds per pod per plant. Taken together, the findings from this study will certainly be useful to okra breeders for appropriate selection strategies in cultivar improvement programmes.
