Screening and Selection of Drought-Tolerant Groundnut Varieties Based on Yield Performance

2018

English

Drought is the most important abiotic limitation to groundnut production in Northern Ghana. Drought, during the pod-filling stages is even more devastating. The current study was conducted to screen groundnut varieties, for drought-tolerance based on yield and other traits. Evaluation of groundnut genotypes was under two environments/water regimes; well-watered and water-stressed. ANOVA was run for Quantitative data. Means were separated by l.s.d. at 95% confidence level. Correlation analyses were performed using SPSS. Combined analysis of variance was computed for the groundnuts across water regimes. Dendrograms were generated using yield data and based on Euclidean distance. Scoring and ranking was used to assess disease incidence on a scale of 1-5. Results indicate that end-of-season drought caused pod yield reduction that varied across genotypes. The Drought Tolerance Index ranged from 0.53 (Kpanieli) to 2.40 (Agric-Manipinta). The highest yielding genotypes under water-stressed condition were Sinkara (582g/plot), Nkatie-sari (512g/plot), Ndogba (470g/plot), Chaco-pag (400g/plot) and Oboshie (381g/plot) and Chinese (local) (340g/plot). Farmers’ selected Sinkara, Ndogba, Chinese, Nkatie-sari, Agric-Manipinta and Chaco-pag based on pod yield and biomass production. Sinkara (0.8798), Sokan-donworor (0.8739), Kpach-Isah (0.8318) and Kpanieli (0.8016) recorded very high mean pod harvest index values, while Ndogba recorded the lowest (0.2252). Combined analysis of variance for pod yield among all the genotypes indicate that the groundnuts performed differently in both water regimes due to the significant interaction effect observed between water regimes and genotypes. Information generated from this study can be used to develop new groundnut varieties that combine higher yield and drought tolerant traits.

Oppong-Sekyere, D.; Akromah, R.; Kena, A. W.; Larweh, V.; Ozias-Akins, P.