Agro-Morphological Characterization of Kenyan Slender Leaf (Crotalaria brevidens and C. ochroleuca) Accessions

Abstract

Slender leaf (Crotalaria spp) is among the indigenous and underutilized vegetables in Kenya whose production is limited to the Western and Coastal regions of the country. For a long time, this crop has been neglected in terms of research and genetic improvement. There is therefore scanty information on its morphological diversity and agronomic performance, hence the need for this study. Field experiments were carried out for two seasons in October to December 2018 and March to May 2019. The experiments were laid out in Randomized Complete Block Design with 29 accessions and replicated three times. Both qualitative and quantitative data were recorded from the accessions based on the Crotalaria descriptors. Quantitative data were subjected to analysis of variance using XLSTAT Version 2019, and accession means were separated using Student’s Newman Keuls test at 95% level of confidence. Both qualitative and quantitative data were subjected to multivariate cluster analysis, and a dendrogram was constructed using the unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic average. The principal component analysis was conducted to obtain information on the importance of the characters. Significant variation in agro-morphological traits was found within and between the two species. Cluster analysis grouped the accessions into seven major classes with a between-classes diversity of 75.13% and a within-classes diversity of 24.87%. This study sets the basis for genetic improvement of slender leaf in Kenya since the observed diversity can be exploited in selection for intraspecific and interspecific hybridization.