Assessing morphological and genetic diversity among traditional African eggplant landraces and detecting salt tolerance and anther culture performance of selected accessions

Scarlet eggplant (Solanum aethiopicum L.) is the most consumed and popular eggplant among indigenous vegetables on the African continent. Since its genetic diversity is still largely unexplored, its genetic diversity and population structure were assessed by employing the iPBS-retrotransposon markers system on a germplasm collection made of several accessions of Solanum aethiopicum gr. gilo. The recorded mean polymorphism information content was 0.363. The model-based structure, neighbor-joining, confirmed the existence of genetic diversity and 3 major genetic population group were obtained. This variation was also observed through phenotypic characterization by using key eggplant descriptors in two distinct experiments (greenhouse and open filed). Afterwards, in vitro anther culture was essayed with different treatments. Only the accession GKE12 showed satisfactory outcome with the rate of embryo formation of 0.82/100 anthers and 0.41/100 anthers corresponding to the rate of developed embryos. The sole obtained embryo/seedling was found to be doubled haploid. The morphological and salt-induced changes on in vitro early seedling growth of selected accessions were also assessed. The results showed that the seedling growth of all eggplant accessions was negatively affected by salt stress compared to controls. The extensive diversity of scarlet eggplant from Rwanda might be used to form the base and genetic resource of an exhaustive breeding program of this economically important African indigenous vegetable.