Interrelationships among traits and morphological diversity of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) accessions in base collection of Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Albania

Abstract

The object of the study was the evaluation of the morphological variability of 92 wheat germplasm (Triticum aestivum L.) part of ex situ collection of Plant Genetic Resources Institute, Agricultural University of Tirana. Principal components and cluster analysis were carried out involving 8 quantitative traits, such as tiller capacity, plant height, spike length, number of spikelet per spike, number of seeds per spikelet, number of seeds per spike, seed size and of seeds per spike. Plant height showed positive significant correlation with yield contributing traits as spike length (r = 0.560) and the number of spikelet’s per spike (r = 0.305). The number of grains per spike had a significant positive relationship with the mass of grains per spike. Three principal components exhibited about 66.42 % of variability where two PCs components influenced mostly the variability (PC1 with 28.1 % and PC2 with 24.43 %). Accessions were grouped into three major clusters based on complete linkage, suggesting for a variance at the level of 27.50 % within a class and 72.50 % between classes. The results suggested that plant height, spike length, number of spikelet per spike were the most important characters in differentiating the genotypes.

Keywords

• bread wheat
• cluster
• PC
• morphology
• traits
• variability