Abstract:
Spider plant (Cleome gynandra L.) is an African indigenous vegetable with great potential
to improve food and nutritional security and incomes among resource-poor communities in
Africa. However, there is limited information on the potential of the existing spider plant genotypes for vegetable and seed production. Knowledge of the agronomic traits and performance of the existing spider plant genotypes is crucial in selecting superior types for crop improvement programs. A study was conducted to assess selected spider plant accessions' agronomic traits pertinent to seed and vegetable production. Two
greenhouse and field experiment were carried out. In this study, 40 spider plant accessions were evaluated for agronomic traits on-station at Kabete Field Station (University of Nairobi) and on-farm at Nyabokarange village, in Bukira North location, Kuria West Sub-County (Migori County) in a randomized complete block design
with three replications. Data collected included days to seedling emergence, percent seedling emergence, plant height, number of leaves per plant, days to 50% flowering, number of pods per plant, number of seeds per pod, the weight of 100 seeds, and seed yield per plant. They were subjected to analysis of variance using GenStat 15th edition at a 5% probability level. The number of days to seedling emergence and percent seedling emergence varied significantly from 4 (accession GBK-045436) to 12.7 (accessions GBK031992, GBK-031837 and GBK-032302) and 23% (accession Baringo) to 59% (commercial variety), respectively. The number of leaves per plant varied significantly from 23.2 (accession Mombasa) to 121.7 (accession GBK-028563), while plant height ranged from 16.0 cm (accession Mombasa) to 107.1 cm (accession GBK-045436). The number of pods per plant ranged from 12.3 (accession Mombasa) to 101.5 (accession Kakamega). Seed yield per plant ranged from 0.3 g (accession Mombasa) to 16.8 g (accession GBK045456 and GBK-045436). The number of leaves per plant was proportional to the number of primary branches (r = 0.81 and 0.78) in the greenhouse and field, respectively. Plant height recorded a significant positive correlation with the number of leaves(r = 0.87) in the field experiment. Results demonstrated that there are significant genotypic variations among the evaluated spider plant accessions. Spider plant landraces generally performed better than the commercial variety (Saga). Genotypes GBK031991, Kakamega, GBK-045456, GBK-032302 and, accession Migori had superior agronomic traits and can be recommended for farmers' cultivation and used in developing new varieties of spider plant.
