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Celosia (Celosia argentea), is an important tropical vegetable for households in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite the multifaceted usefulness, available genotypes are low-yielding, and the vegetable faces dangers of genetic erosion due to poor research attention. The magnitude and pattern of variability will guide the choice of breeding methods for improvement. Twenty-one celosia accessions were evaluated in 2018 and 2019 to determine study genetic variability and heterotic patterns among clusters. Accessions and clusters differed significantly (p ≤0.05/0.01) for plant height, number of leaves/plant, stem weight, harvest index and dry matter content. Genotypic coefficients of variation; ranging from 37.89 to 0.12, were lower than phenotypic coefficients of variation which ranged from 114.55 to 0.12, both for number of leaves/plant and harvest index respectively, indicating the importance of environment in the variability. Discriminant analysis indicated low (8.12%) classification error rate, indicating the possibility of heterotic patterns among clusters. Principal component (PC) analysis controlled 73% of the observed variability among accessions and identified all measured traits as important contributors with loadings ranging from 0.30 (in PC 1) to 0.63 (in PC 2) for harvest index and stem weight respectively. Useful levels of association were also observed among measured traits. The study concluded that there was sufficient genetic variability for effective selection. Discriminant and principal component analyses identified plant height, number of leaves/plant and dry matter content as major contributors to variation among accessions. Weight of edible parts of Celosia can be simultaneously improved with plant height and number of leaves/plants.

Okra yields are low in West and Central Africa and factors including narrow genetic base of available germplasm have been implicated. An assessment of genetic variability among germplasm from various sources and knowledge of trait contributions to these variations is crucial to the success of okra breeding program. Eighteen okra accessions were evaluated during the 2020 cropping season in Nigeria to assess the genotypes for genetic diversity, group the accessions into clusters and identify traits that chiefly accounted for the variations among the genotypes. Data obtained were subjected to analysis of variance (ANOVA), metroglyph and principal component analyses (PCA). ANOVA revealed significant accession mean squares for majority of the measured traits. Metroglyph analysis grouped the accessions into four clusters with members of Cluster IV generally high-yielding, early-maturing and short genotypes. NGB00353 and NGB00356 that were among genotypes with high total index scores were members of Cluster IV. The first four principal components (PCs) accounted for 80% of the total observed variation. PC1 with the highest discriminatory power was loaded with days to budding, internode length, pod yield.plot−1 and the number of pods.plant−1. The variation within and between clusters could be explored in okra breeding program.