Morphological characterization and genetic diversity assessment of accessions of Musa spp

Characterization of Musa spp is highly relevant to the development of effective Musa breeding programs, especially because crop productivity and yields are highly important for preventing hunger and food insecurity. This work aimed to characterize and determine the genomic constitutions of the Musa accessions established from the Ebonyi State University Abakaliki Musa germplasm. Ten start codon targeted (SCoT) polymorphic markers were employed for the genotyping of eleven accessions. The accessions were classified by assessing the expression of each of the 26 characters by assigning a score ranging from 1 to 5, where a score of 1 indicated close proximity to wild acuminata and 5 indicated wild balbisiana expression. For molecular analysis, a modified CTAB method was used for DNA extraction, and a total of ten polymorphic SCoT markers were used for genetic diversity assessment. The morphological results showed that the plantain genotypes considered were hybrids of banana and plantain, with the majority of the genotypes being classified as diploid, while Agbagba, Efolred, SH3436, Calcutta 4, and PITA 14 were triploid with two chromosome sets comprising banana origin. A total of 86 alleles with an average of 8.81 alleles per locus were observed in the accessions. Calcutta 4 scored higher on measures of diversity indices, with high similarity being observed among the eleven accessions of Musa spp. The dendrogram revealed five major clusters at a similarity index distance of 0.7400. This similarity observed among the accessions indicates that they are closely related and may have a recent common ancestor.