PJB-2023-69
MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN THE BC3 HYBRID OF ALFALFA MULTIFOLIATE LEAVES BASED ON MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS
OMER IDRIS MUSA OLOM
Abstract
The current study evaluated one hundred forty-seven BC3 genotypes and their parents to select genotypes based on the best morphological traits for future breeding. All data were analyzed using multivariate analysis (principal component and agglomerative hierarchical cluster analyses). The result of basic statistics revealed high variation in the means, minimums, and maximums for most morphological traits. Correlation analysis showed a significant positive relationship between plant height and second branch length, stem diameter, number of nodes, number of branches per plant, and fresh shoot weight. The principal component analysis revealed a total of eight main principal components, with the first two components exhibiting the greatest degree of variation (68.83). In principal component 1, the most important traits were plant height, number of branches per plant, stem diameter, second branch length, and the number of nodes, which comprised 51.02% of the total variation. The genotypes were grouped into five clusters based on morphological traits using Ward’s method. Clusters I and IV showed high mean values for most features, like the number of branches per plant, number of multifoliate leaves per plant, number of multifoliate leaves on the main branch, and fresh shoot weight. So the genotypes in clusters I and IV can be used for a future breeding program of alfalfa multifoliate leaves.
To Cite this article:
Download
