Comparative Study of Growth and Seed Yield of Jatropha Curcas Landrace Types of South West Nigeria

Abstract

Jatropha (Jatropha curcas L.) has been identified as an alternative source of biofuel in an increasing demand for energy but with declining fossil fuel resources. In Nigeria, many landrace types have not being evaluated for their productivity.

A field experiment was conducted to evaluate nine landrace types of J. curcas collected from deferent parts of Nigeria in the Teaching & Research farm of University of Ibadan, between September 2009 and March 2010, for the growth and yield parameters. Twenty stands of each landrace type were planted at spacing of 2m x 3m in a Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) in four replications.

The results showed that Ode, Ede and Egbe1 landrace types flowered at 18, 20, and 22, weeks after sowing (WAS) respectively but Dagbala and Egbe 2 starts flowering at 26 WAS while others only grew vegetatively. Ode produced the highest number of primary branches while the order of leaf biomas was Dalgbala > Ode > Ede > Egbe2 > Egbe1 > Ex-dala > Ex-Kwagiri > Wakajaye > Ex-mbat-daya respectively. At 30WAS the yield of Jatropha landrace types obtained were 3.98, 3.2, 0.5and 0.5g/24m² for Ode, Ede, Egbe1 and Dagbala respectively while other land races did not produce any yield. However, there was no significant difference observed in the means of the yield parameters observed for all the landrace types.

Ode, Ede, and Egbe1 had the best performance due to their early flowering and fruiting abilities.