Assessment of variability of finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L) Gaertn) landraces germplasm in Northern Nigeria

Germplasm identification and characterization is an important link between conservation and utilization of plant genetic resources. The present study was conducted to characterize the morphological diversity of 10 germplasm accessions of Finger millet (Eleusine coracana (L) Gaertn) collected from diverse locations spread across the geographic Northern Nigeria during the 2008, 2009 and 2010 cropping seasons. The seeds of the accessions were planted in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replications in each of two locations-Keffi and Gwagwalada, during the three cropping seasons. The field studies for the three seasons in the two locations followed uniform agricultural practices. Field data was collected on morphological traits such as plant height, leaf length, leaf diameter, finger length, finger width, number of fingers and 1000 seed weight were recorded in accordance with standard finger millet descriptors. The results obtained, showed that plant height in accession Ex-Kwi was significantly different from all the other nine accessions while the highest leaf length which was recorded in Ex-Riyom was significantly different (p < 0.05) from only accession Ex-Dantse. Similarly, significant variations were observed in the number and length of fingers, and 1000 seed weight across all the accessions tested, over the three cropping seasons in the multilocational trial. Evaluation of phenotypic and genotypic characters of the different accessions revealed that the genotypes expressed significant genetic diversity for plant height, 1000 seed weight, leaf length and number of tillers than all the other traits assessed at p < 0.05 level of significance. These results tend to suggest a high variability existing among the selected morphological traits. Specifically, 87% of the variations were explained by the ANOVA model leaving only 13% unexplained. The cluster analysis based on morphological traits revealed six major distinct groups with one landrace forming independent cluster for the pooled analysis for the three years.