*4.1. Qualitative Traits*

All qualitative traits are found to have significant variations except leaf hairs, corolla color, fruit cross-section, and fruit position (Tables 2 and 3). Some other previous reports also published a similar type of fruit curvature [42–44]. Eggplant is a herbaceous plant, mostly upright in nature [45]. Our results demonstrated that 17.69% upright, 49.23% intermediate, and 33.08% prostrate growth habit among all the studied genotypes

(Table 2). Shekar et al. [46] clustered the eggplant plants into upright and intermediate. Islam et al. [42] saw 48% intermediate, 45% upright, and 7% prostrate growth habit at vegetative stage among the studied genotypes. They suggested that the plant growth habit is used for the identification of eggplant varieties.

As per leaf blade length, eggplant genotypes were divided into two groups, viz., intermediate and short [47]. They reported that 30 genotypes had intermediate leaf blade length while five genotypes showed short leaf blade length. Similarly, based on leaf blade width, the genotypes were divided into three types, viz., wide, intermediate, and narrow [45]. Osei et al. [13] found significant variation in leaf blade length and width in eggplant. In the current study, we distributed eggplant genotypes into three types, viz., very strong (5 genotypes), strong, intermediate (43 genotypes), and weak (59 genotypes), based on leaf blade lobing (Table 2). Sunseri et al. [48] reported 60% weak, 37% intermediate, and 3% strong leaf blade lobbing in eggplant. In our investigation, 6 genotypes had very acute, 28 had acute leaf blade tip angle followed by intermediate leaf blade tip angle, which includes 64 genotypes, while 32 genotypes each had obtuse. Sunseri et al. [48] observed 62% acute, 33% very acute, and 5% intermediate leaf blade tip angle in eggplant. Dash et al. [49] noticed acute leaf blade tip angle in many eggplant genotypes. A much higher variation was observed in leaf prickle (Table 2), where most of the genotype (72 genotypes) had intermediate prickle on the leaf. Sunseri et al. [48] noted that leaf prickles were absent in 25% of genotypes, whereas the remaining genotypes produced 40% very few, 25% few, and 5% both intermediate and many prickles. Tiwari et al. [50] noted prickles in stem, petiole, calyx including peduncle, and leaf including veins in eggplant. Many leaf hairs (98.46%) are found in most of the genotypes. Light violet (31.54%), pale violet (64.62%), and white (3.85%) colors were noted among the studied genotypes for corolla Color (Table 2).

In the present study, we described eight distinctive traits of eggplant fruits (Table 3). For traits related to the fruit calyx prickles, fruit color distribution, fruit color at ripening, and fruit flesh density much higher variation were observed in the cultivated eggplant (Table 3). Similar kinds of fruit calyx prickle distribution were also reported by [45]. It was noticed that 68 genotypes had no curvature on fruit; 37 genotypes showed slightly curved fruit and 25 genotypes had curved fruit. Sunseri et al. [48,51] reported sickleshaped, snaked-shaped, curved, and U-shaped eggplant fruits along with fruits with no curvature. Eggplant genotypes were distributed into two types: rounded (39 genotypes) and depressed (91 genotypes), on the basis of fruit apex shape. Sunseri et al. [48] reported that 38, 34, and 28% of eggplant genotypes had depressed, rounded, and protruded types of fruit apex shape, respectively. Eggplant fruits traits variations are important in protection from UV irradiation, insect attack in plants as well as socio-economic value. More fruit color variation was noted by [52] and [53], which support our present study. Solaimana et al. [51] found uniform and stripped fruit color distribution. The variations in fruits color were also described by [51,54,55]. Tiwari et al. [50] divided the eggplant fruits into six color groups i.e., green (37.27%), purple (25.45%), milky white (13.62%), purple-black (12.72%), light purple or lilac grey (9.09%), and scarlet red (1.08%). Fruit flesh density is an important characteristic for the determination of fruit volume and weight. A wide range of variation was observed in fruit flesh density, the highest number of genotypes had very loose flesh density (74 genotypes).
