Ecological Adaptation Drives Growth: An Ecotype Study of African Spider Flower Locally Designated as "Qetso" in Southern Ethiopia

Abstract

Betewulign Eshetu Ademe

The world is experiencing a shrinking land against the increasing fertility of mankind. This is creating a demand supply imbalance subsequently resulting in severe food insecurity, malnutrition and ultimately poverty. This complication is coupled with highly fragmented land for farming practices as urbanization is prominently surpassing in the 21st century. Increasing arable land is unlikely while regulating the population particularly in Africa is a delicate. Therefore, an alternative to mitigate this imbalance between the crop and population productivity is of a pertinent approach. The best approach designed in this study is growing a neglected crop named; African Spider Flower (Cleome gynandra L.) locally named”Qetso” in the marginal lands where no crops are growing. Growing this crop in the marginal lands has several benefits over the existing conventional experience. As the crop is rich nutritionally, while it can also be considered for its medicinal value accounted to its richness in vitamins and minerals. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate and compare the growth performance indicator traits among three African spider flower ecotypes. The experiment was laid out in randomized completed block design (RCBD) with three replication at the research and demonstration site of Kulfo Campus, College of Agricultural Sciences of Arba Minch University. Data on the growth performance viz; plant height, leaf number per plant and number of primary branches per plant, shoot fresh weight and shoot dry weight were collected and the organized data was subjected to ANOVA. All growth traits among ecotypes of African spider flower are statistically affected by the differences in the ecology from where they collected at (p<0.05). Arba Minch ecotypes are superior in all growth traits over the Holte and Humbo ecotypes.

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