Preliminary Characterization and Evaluation of Landraces of Indian Spinach ( Basella spp. L.) for Agro-economic and Quality Traits

Indian spinach (Basella spp. L.) is an underutilized and underexploited indigenous leafy vegetable which has highnutritional and medicinal value and extensively used in the sub-continent. Landrace germplasm is endowed with rich genetic variabilityfor various yield and quality traits. A total of six accessions collected through an exploration during 2010 were pre-bred by selfingduring the October-January cropping season in 2011. These landraces were evaluated in a randomized block design with fourreplications in June-September, 2012 at Vegetable Research Station, Dr. Y. S. R. Horticultural University, Rajendranagar to assess thegenetic diversity, variability, heritability and genetic advance for yield and its components in the material. Multivariate analysisfollowing Ward’s minimum variance-method revealed distinct clustering pattern. Analysis of variance revealed highly significantdifferences among all genotypes for all the studied traits indicating considerable variability among ecotypes for most of the measuredparameters. There was significant variability for genetic potential of all genotypes for different traits under study. The highestvariability at genotypic level was observed for stalk yield (73.95%) followed by leaf-stalk ratio (46.70%) and weight of tender shoot(41.25%). Low to high estimates of broad sense heritability were found in different traits. High estimates of heritability (>60%) coupledwith high genetic advance as percent of mean (>20%) for petiole length, internodal length, weight of tender shoot, stalk yield, leaf-stalkratio and harvest index revealed that most likely the heritability is due to additive gene effects and selection may be effective. KCI Citation Count: 1