BOUBACAR SINARE
GENETIC IMPROVEMENT OF GROUNDNUT (ARACHIS HYPOGAEA L.) FOR HIGH SEED YIELD AND OIL CONTENT IN BURKINA FASO
ABSTRACT
Groundnut is one of the major food and oil crops grown in the world. It is cultivated in the tropical and sub-tropical areas worldwide, especially in Africa where the crop is largely acknowledged as a strategic crop in addressing hunger, food security, malnutrition, poverty and nutrition deficiency (Desmae et al., 2018; Pasupuleti Janila et al., 2013). In Burkina Faso, groundnut is widely produced across the country as a food and oil crop with important cash income for both urban and rural zones. It contributes to women empowerment. Participatory Rural Appraisal was conducted involving 378 respondents including farmers, traders, and processors to assess the different constraint associated to groundnut production and understand trait preferences in three main production areas (central-eastern, centralnorthern and central western) of Burkina Faso. The lack of improved varieties, absence of agricultural credit, and the high price of seeds for improved varieties were the most important constraints while varieties with large seed and high oil content are the most preferred. Breeding populations were developed to understand the nature of gene effect and genetic variation affecting yield, yield-component traits and oil content. Three farmers preferred varieties with a small seed and high oil content (TE3, SH470Py, QH243C) and three varieties with large seed and low oil content (ICGV09195, CG7, Chalimbana) were crossed in full diallel to generate populations. The varieties and their progenies were evaluated in a 6 x 6 lattice square design to assess their combining ability and maternal effect. Yield-component traits including hundred pod weight (HPW), hundred seed weight (HSW), seed yield per hectare (SYH), pod length (PL), pod width (PWD), seed length (SL), and seed width (SWD) showed predominantly additive gene action but hundred pod weight (HPW), pod length (PL), and pod width (PWD) were influenced by non-additive gene. Similarly, oleic acid content (OAC) was influenced by non-additive gene. For oil content (OIC) epistatic gene action seemed to play a predominant role in controlling the trait and maternal effect affects the transmission of the 3 traits. While groundnut improvement for yield-component traits and oil content through selection will be positive, the genetic gain will be relatively low due to the low narrow-sense heritability recorded for the traits. The varieties Chalimbana, ICGV 09195, QH243C, and CG7 appeared to be good combiners and could be useful in the improvement of some traits such as hundred pod yield, hundred seed yield, Progenies from ICGV09195 x QH243C (144 individuals) were advanced to assess the variability of the population for yield component trait and oil content. One hundred and fortyfour (144) individual genotypes were evaluated in 2020 in two locations (i.e. 1 location in Burkina Faso, and 1 location in Mali) using lattice squared design replicated two times. Phenotypic data was collected for 100- pod weight, 100 seed weight, pod length, pod width, seed length, seed width, oil content, oleic acid content, and linoleic acid content. There is a large variability due to HPW, HSW, PL, PWD, SW, SWD, ORL, OAC and ORL, OAC, LAC. A strong and positive correlation was observed for the yield component traits excepted the SP and NPP which showed a negative correlation with the other yield component traits. Principal component Analysis (PCA) of the diversity of the population, characterized and classified the genotype into 4 groups. Genotypes from group1 showed high performance for HPW, HSW, SP, PL, PWD, SL, and SWD and could be useful in developing high yielding varieties while genotypes from group 2 and group 3 could be important in improving oleic acid content and the oleic/linoleic ratio. Genotypes from group 4 are more similar to the parent QH243C and are the best performing line for oil content and linoleic acid content. The genotype RIL-63, which has the highest HPW (63.63g/100) and good SL (1.36cm), SWD (0.76cm) and also OIC of 51% and 61.97% of OA, maybe of importance in Burkina Faso for domestic use and oil purpose.