Phenotypic variation and simultaneous selection of number of leaves/plant and seed mass in jute mallow (Corchorus olitorius)

Abstract

Corchorus olitorius is a leafy vegetable cultivated for the mucilage in its leaves. Leaf greenness, leaf number, leaf length, and leaf width are popular market traits for this vegetable. Little is known about the direct and indirect contribution of traits to leaf number and seed yield. Forty-two accessions were evaluated in a randomized complete block design with four replications during the 2017 and 2018 cropping seasons. The findings showed that accessions 25, 19, and 28 performed best for leaf length, accessions 31, 22, and 23 for the number of leaves/plant, accessions 4, 18, and 27 for the number of seeds/capsule and accessions 8, 11, and 7 for seed mass. The seed mass was positively related to leaf length, leaf width, and plant height at maturity, the number of seeds/capsule, the number of seeds/capsule and 100-seed mass. The number of leaves/plant was influenced by leaf length, leaf width, and branch length. The path analysis for seed mass showed that the number of branches/plant, seed mass/capsule, the number of seeds/capsule and capsule mass made a large contribution to seed yield. The indirect contribution of traits to the number of leaves/plant was small compared to the direct effect. The leaf length had the largest direct effect on the number of leaves/plant with its largest indirect effect by reducing seed mass. The direct contribution of leaf length to the number of leaves/plant was masked by the phenotypic expression of petal width. The number of branches/plant is a reliable index of seed yield improvement. Hybridization among the best-performing accessions for leaf number, leaf chlorophyll and seed yield will produce new varieties through selection.