Wild and indigenous cassava, Manihot esculenta Crantz diversity:: An untapped genetic resource

Cassava is the most important food for poor people in the tropics. Its roots are used either fresh or in numerous processed forms. It is a shrub with tuberous adventitious roots arising from stem cutting. Wild relatives of cassava are perennial and vary in growth pattern from nearly acaulescent subshrubs to small trees. They have been used as a source of useful characters such as high protein content, apomixis, resistance to mealy bug and mosaic disease and tolerance to drought. Cultivars stem from interspecific hybrids of cassava with M. glaziovii Muell.-Arg. are cultivated now in about 4 millions hectars in Nigeria. Indigenous clones are potential source of B-carotene and lycopene.