The World Vegetable Center Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) Core Collection as a Source for Flooding Stress Tolerance Traits for Breeding

Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) is a heat tolerant vegetable crop with high economic and nutritional importance in parts of Asia, Africa, America. The okra biodiversity held gene bank collections could be mined for traits breeding more stress cultivars. An core collection 166 accessions comprising A. esculentus, moschatus, caillei, manihot has been assembled from the World Vegetable Center germplasm (840 accessions) based on diversity analysis 20 microsatellite markers. A selection esculentus (75 breeder-selected genotypes have screened variation their response to flooding under field conditions using throughput phenotyping system. Growth increment per day changes physiological indices were measured before, during, after application 9 days stress. Several showed only small reduction daily growth during flooding. Across panel, maintained was correlated normalized differential vegetation index negatively plant senescence index. Accessions health selected future further use breeding.