Abstract

Agricultural growth in Nigeria is increasingly recognized to be central to sustained improvement in economic development, food security and poverty alleviation. However, climate change and its adverse effects such as drought have taken their tolls on the growth of plants and crop yield. Despite these climate conditions in Nigeria, underutilized crops like Coconut may still provide farmers with promising alternatives for enhancing nutrition, food security and income generation. This study utilized the marker assisted selection technique to select for high-yielding and disease resistant accessions among coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) germplasm from Nigeria Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR). Ten Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR) markers, comprising of five high-yield and five disease-resistant associated markers. The study revealed a diverse combination of marker amplifications among sampled accession. However, only 10 of the coconut accessions showed all marker combinations, except for CNKGDEST123 which showed polymorphic amplifications among samples. One accession, 753 (NUR), showed an amplified band closest to the expected band size for CNKGDEST123 marker. Hence, this sample is recommended for breeding programmes that involves coconut high yield and disease resistant improvement