Agro-morphological Diversity of the ‘Folou’ or ‘Flado’ Farmers' Variety Group of Yams Belonging to the D. alata Species in Burkina Faso

Abstract

The yams grown in Burkina Faso belong to the Folou or Flado farming group in the Gourounsi and Lobiri national languages, and can be found in several of the country's agrosystems. However, their agro-morphological diversity is not yet well established. The aim of this study is to determine the agro-morphological variability of yam cultivars belonging to this group. To this end, 14 quantitative traits selected from the yam descriptor were chosen to characterize the collection. The trial was conducted in a randomized Fisher block design with three replications. Work was carried out during the 2019-2020 and 2020 2021 wet seasons in the village of Onliassan in the Sissili province. The study revealed little differentiation between cultivars for all the traits studied. Only two traits showed a highly significant difference and one trait showed a significant difference. These are internode length (LE), tuber length (LTU) and number of tubers (NTU) respectively. The length of the segment, the length of the tuber, and the number of tubers are very important in determining the results, so that tubers that have the characteristics of short stem segments, long tubers and a large number of tubers are very necessary for selecting parents in the tuber hybridization breeding program, so that they can create more diversity and high yields.