EVALUATION OF FONIO (Digitaria exilis) ACCESSIONS FOR IMPROVED AGRONOMIC TRAITS IN THE GUINEA AND SUDAN SAVANNAH AGROECOLOGICAL ZONES OF GHANA

Abstract

Fonio is categorised as one of the neglected and underutilized crops of West Africa, Fonio has been neglected due to inadequate research information for its improvement. Notwithstanding the importance of Fonio in African traditional agriculture, Fonio remains primitive and faces challenges like lack of improved varieties, poor soils and inappropriate crop husbandry, which are reasons for its associated poor grain yields. In Ghana, Fonio is gaining popularity particularly in the Northern part of the country, hence the objectives of this study were to; evaluate available Fonio accessions for superior genotypes in terms of yield associated traits, explore the possibility of growing Fonio in different agroecologies and also to assess Fonio response to supplementary nutrient application in order to promote sustainable production of the crop. The study made use of 2 x 4 x 5 (two agroecological zones, four fertilizer levels and five accessions) factorial experiment in randomized complete block design with three replications. This research was conducted in the cropping season of 2019. The data collected included, number of leaves, plant height, basal leaf sheath colour, peduncle colour, spikelet colour, stem colour, number of racemes, days to physiological maturity, number of tillers per plant, days to 50% flowering, lodging, days to emergence of flag leaf, peduncle length, number of panicles per plant, leaf area, internode length, 1000 seeds weight and Total grain weight. These data were subjected to analysis of variance, UPGMA cluster analysis, Pearson's Correlation Coefficient and Principal Component analysis. Three way interactive effects of accession, fertilizer application and location was significant (P<0.05) for number of tillers per plant and number of panicles per Fonio plant. Two way interaction effects of accession and location was significant(P<0.05) on plant height at maturity, leaf area, basal leaf sheath colour and number of panicles per plant. That of accession and fertilizer application interaction was also significant (P<0.05) for lodging and racemes number panicle. The interaction influence of location and fertilizer application was as well significant (P<0.05) for number of tillers and number of panicles per Fonio plant. There were significant (P<0.05) variations among accessions for most of the attributes ( example, grain yield, plant height, leaf area etc.) measured. Early maturing accessions with 70 to 80 days to physiological maturity were the best performing accessions in terms of Fonio grain yield; the earliest accession which took 70 days to reach physiological maturity was judged the best with total grain yield of 1015.10 kg/ha) acompared to 720.73 kg/ha obtained as the best grain yield for accssions with more than 80 days to physiological maturity. The accessions were grouped in to three clusters with about 99% similarity coefficient within clusters and a wide inter-cluster distance. Acessions response to fertilizer application was significant (P<0.05) for most of the traits (example, lodging, tiller number per plant, peduncle length etc,) studied. However, all fertilizer treatments did not affect Fonio grain yield significantly. Location influence also showed significant (P<0.05) variation for most of the traits studied especially for total grain yield, leaf area, and number of tillers per plant. In conclusion, the five Fonio accessions studied were significantly diverse and respondent differently to the influence of location and fertilizer application.