Performance of African marigold (Tagetes errecta) cultivars for vegetative, flower and chemical traits at different locations of Ethiopia

Abstract

Despite the African marigold (Tagetes erecta L.) is one of the most commercially exploited flower and medicinal crops in the world and have received great attention in scientific research in the recent past, the plant has never been tested under Ethiopian condition for its agronomic and chemical traits. Thus, the present study was conducted with the main objective to evaluate the growth, yield and quality attributes of three introduced African marigold cultivars. The experiments were conducted at six locations in Ethiopia using a randomized complete block design with three replications. Data on vegetative growth, flower characteristics, inflorescence yield, and xanthophyll content were collected and statistically tested. Significant variation (P < 0.01) was observed among cultivars across the tested locations for all the studied parameters. Overall higher values of plant height (65.48 cm), branch number plant-1 (89.09), inflorescence number plant-1 (76.89), inflorescence weight (25.48 g), inflorescence yield plant-1 (560.77 g) and inflorescence yield ha-1 (18 t) were obtained in AVT001 cultivar and flower xanthophyll content (27.6 mg g-1) in AVT540 cultivar; while lowest values were rerecorded for all characters in Hewoyde cultivar. Inflorescence yield ha-1 was found positively and significantly correlated with all parameters except xanthophyll content. Xanthophyll content was found positively and significantly correlated with flower weight. As the cultivars AVT001 and AVT540 are adapted very well and gave comparable and/or higher yields with the other marigold growing countries, the two cultivars can be recommended for commercial cultivation of their inflorescence and extracted pigments in Ethiopia.