Farmer's Knowledge of Horticultural Traits and Participatory Selection of African Eggplant Varieties (Solanum aethiopicum) in Tanzania

Participatory selection was conducted in 2008 through 2009 to identify farmers' preference for species and horticultural traits that may constitute future breeding objectives. Vegetable farmers were selected from Moshi and Arusha regions, test population comprised twenty-six accessions from four Solanum species (eggplant and relatives). Purposive sampling was used to select the farming communities with high African eggplant production activities; a multistage random sampling procedure was adopted to select farmers from three regions for participatory meeting. The focus group discussion sessions identified fruit shape, taste, earliness, medicinal properties, marketability and resistance to diseases as farmers' preferred traits in S. aethiopicum; taste and marketability for S. melongena, taste and medicinal properties among S. macrocarpon and S. anguivi. Fruits characterized by cream colour at commercial harvest are most preferred compared to green, to a lesser extent is purple. Interestingly high fruits per plant, fruits per cluster and fruit cluster per plant best described S. anguivi. Fruit yield was superior in Db3 (S. aethiopicum Gilo group), top five accessions for organoleptic properties are Db3, Ab2, MM 1619, S00052 and MM 1086. Characters indicated above may constitute breeding objectives and population identified may serve as pollen parents for development of new varieties in african eggplant. Intraspecific hybridization within S. aethiopicum Gilo cultigroup, hybridization among Gilo and Shum cultigroups and interspecific hybridization between S. aethiopicum and S. anguivi may evolve new population aimed at improving fruit yield.