Morphological characterization of roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa L.) germplasm collected from the Darfur region in Sudan using qualitative traits
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Abstract
Eighty-two accessions of roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa var. sabdariffa L.) collected from five states in the Darfur region, Sudan, were characterized during the rainy seasons of 2018, 2020 and 2021 using ten qualitative descriptors covering vegetative and inflorescence traits. Occurrence levels of descriptor states ranged from very rarely occurring in 5% or less of the accessions to abundantly occurring in more than 90%. The enlarged fleshy calyces, the main usable organs, showed five different shapes and five different colours. All accessions were grouped into two major clusters at a Euclidean distance of 3.5, with one cluster containing 11 accessions, all collected from West Darfur state, and the second cluster containing the rest of the accessions collected from all five states of Darfur. The latter were further grouped at a Euclidean distance of 3 into three subclusters. Each subcluster contained separately all accessions collected from either Central Darfur, North Darfur, or East Darfur states, indicating a high tendency of clustering according to collection site. However, those collected from West Darfur were dispersed among all clusters and subclusters. Moreover, petal colour discriminated between clusters, as did collection site. These variations of roselle accessions from Darfur make them promising for further use in improvement programmes, especially for product quality and drought tolerance. Nevertheless, further characterization and evaluation for more morpho-agronomic traits as well as genotyping are needed. As some characters were rare, close attention should be paid to avoiding their loss during seed regeneration, to ensure the best management of such diverse germplasm.
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