Analysis of leaf characteristics of local moringa (moringa oleifera lam.) Germplasms in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Moringa (Moringa oleifera Lam.) is one of the most popular vegetable crop species cultivated throughout the tropics with a high medicinal and nutritive value. However, there were no evidences regarding crop improvement, breeding or germplasm evaluation programmers reported for this valuable crop. Hence, this study was conducted in Grain Legume and Oil Crop Research and Development Center, Angunakolapelessa to identify the best Moringa accessions with desirable morphological characteristics. Twenty accessions representing 4 districts which were maintained in field plots with 3 replications per accessions, were arranged in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD). At 90 days after field planting, the 4 leaf morphological characters were recorded and hierarchical cluster dendrogram was generated to reflect their relatedness using cluster analysis. Our results revealed that the leaf dry matter content ranged between 22.1% and 26.4%. The maximum value of 26.4% was recorded in the M94 accession, which was collected from the Kurunegala district. Mean tripinnate leaf length ranged between 62.5±0.5 mm and 82.0± 4.68mm whilst the tripinnate leaf width ranged between 52.3 mm and 69.3 mm. Accordingly, the highest leaf dimensions were recorded in accession no. M14 and M97 collected from Batticaloa and Jaffna districts respectively. According to the dendrogram, accessions M14 and M97 were resulted as the most distinctive accessions in the study. Conversely, M14, M94 and M97 were clustered in one group depicting that the moringa leaf traits subjected to vary according to the geographical location within the country.