Heteroploidy and Male-Sterility for Leaf Yield Improvement

African nightshades are leafy vegetables in Africa and most parts of Asia popular for their high nutritional value and health benefits. The plants are strongly autogamic, exhibiting early and excessive flowering coupled with prolific fruit- and seed-set that competes with the leaves for assimilates, reducing leaf productivity to extremely low levels. This study was conducted to evaluate the potential for suppression or delay of this reproductive function through heteroploidy-induced sterility and mutation-induced male-sterility, and thereby improve and stabilize leaf yields. An abnormal floral organ mutant was isolated with 'vegetative' large leaf-like sepals in all floral whorls from winter to mid-spring, stamenless in late-spring, indeterminate in summer and partially restored in autumn. The mutant was temperature-sensitive, making it possible to manipulate vegetative and reproductive growth phases for increased leaf yield and for propagation, respectively