Evaluation of seedlings of oil palm germplasm from Sierra Leone and Senegal in India

The oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) germplasm of present study namely, Sierra Leone (SLE) and Senegal (SEN) are important genetic resource as their diversity is presumably very high due to their locations in the centre of origin of West Africa. A total of nine accessions each from two sources (SEN and SLE) were evaluated for vegetative growth traits in the nursery viz, seedling height, stem height, collar girth, leaf number, length of leaf, width of leaf, leaf area, petiole thickness and petiole length of the seedlings and their diversity were estimated using Shannon Weaver Index (SWI). The results revealed that accessions namely, SLE14 (66) and SLE13 (349) showed vigorous seedling growth; whereas, SEN02 (191) had shown dwarf vegetative growth. Diversity estimates ranged from 0.00 in SLE12 (186) for number of leaves and 0.954 in SEN01 (38) for collar girth. SLE01 (38) and SLE03 (17) had shown high diversity estimates and lowest diversity estimate was observed in SEN01 (284). Sierra Lone sources of accessions showed higher diversity than those from Senegal. Outcome obtained from the present nursery study can be utilized for advanced breeding evaluation in matured palms.