VARIABILITY STUDIES ON TEN GENOTYPES OF EGGPLANT FOR GROWTH AND YIELD PERFORMANCE IN SOUTH EASTERN NIGERIA

Ten genotypes of eggplant collected from different parts of Nigeria were evaluated to estimate the magnitude of genetic variability, relationship of some important agronomic traits and their contributions to yield. The results obtained showed highly significant differences (P≤0.01) among the genotypes in all the traits studied. High broad sense heritability (h2bs) was recorded for number of fruits per plant (99.48%), fruit circumference (99.16%), and fruit yield per hectare (97.98%) for late planting and similar trend was obtained for early planting. The cluster analysis grouped the genotypes into four clusters for both early and late seasons planting, respectively. Principal component analysis showed that number of fruits per plant, plant height and number of leaves per plant contributed more to the total variations observed in the eggplant in both seasons. Correlation analysis under early season, showed that fruit yield correlated positively with fruit circumference (r=0.584) and fruit diameter (r=0.585). Number of fruits per plant had significant and positive correlation with number of branches per plant (r = 0.755*), number of leaves per plant (r =0.817**) and plant height (r=0.690*).The same trend of correlation was observed in the late season indicating that fruit yield can be increased indirectly by positive selection of  plants  with large fruits circumference and diameter. Applications of breeding methodology will improve the productivity of these eggplant genotypes since there is an existence of genetic variability among these genotypes as progress in breeding depends on this variation