Investigation of genetic diversity among some plant of north Iran tea germplasm (Camellia sinensis) using morphological traits.

Subject Areas : Developmental biology of plants and animals , development and differentiation in microorganisms

Arezo MehrAsa ¹ , hosein Moradi ² , davod bakhshi ³ , shahin jahangirzadeh khiavi ⁴

1 - Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Crop Sciences, Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, Sari, Iran
2 - Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Crop Sciences, Sari Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources University, Sari, Iran
3 - Department of Horticultural Science, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran
4 - Tea Research Center, Horticultural Sciences Research Institute, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Lahijan, Iran;

Received: 2022-12-17 Accepted : 2023-03-22 Published : 2024-02-12

Keywords: genetic diversity, Morphology, north Iran, Tea cultivars,

Abstract :

Tea (Camellia sinensis(L.) O. Kuntze) is one of most important crop in north of Iran, Today’s, many of these plants are at risk of disappearing therefore having information about genetic of them can help in designing of breeding programs. In this study, 30 tea bushes by using 21 quantitative and qualitative traits related to the leaves and stems of the tea plant was analyzed for genetic diversity using on Gower distances coefficient and UPGMA algorithm. The results of data analysis showed that all the selected tea samples were morphologically similar to each other, although some of them showed small and slight differences in some characteristics, but overall they did not have significant differences. Based on the obtained data, the difference between the studied samples ranged from 0.048 to 0.499 with an average of 0.265. In order to determine the relationship of the examined genotypes and grouping them based on the morphological traits in cluster analysis at the distance coefficient of 0.29, the examined samples were grouped into four main groups. According to the way of grouping, it was observed that the distribution of the studied samples does not follow a specific pattern and does not match with the geographical distribution. According to the results of the present research, it is confirmed that morphological analyzes in tea can be used successfully to determine genetic diversity and relationship. The results of this study open a window to deal with the old problem of classification and identification of tea in Iran.