The selection of top genotypes in forage corn using multivariate methods in Varamin region

Subject Areas : Journal of Plant Ecophysiology

seyed mohammadreza ehtashami ¹ (گروه زراعت و اصلاح نباتات، دانشگاه گیلان، رشت، ایران)
mahdi ramezani ² (گروه زراعت و اصلاح نباتات، دانشگاه گیلان، رشت، ایران)
matin frouzi ³ (- گروه علوم و تکنولوژی بذر، دانشگاه گیلان، رشت، ایران)

Received: 2015-05-18 Accepted : 2015-05-18 Published : 2015-05-01

Keywords: Factor analysis, Cluster analysis, Cultivar, Main component,

Abstract :

In order to investigate the various morphologic and physiologic characteristics of forage corn genotypes, an experiment carried out at Agricultural and Natural Resource Research Center of Tehran province during 2009-2010 growing season. Twenty genotypes of forage corn were compared with based on Randomized Complete Blocks Design with four replications. Studied traits were growth period, number of leaf, plant height, stem diameter, fresh and dry weight of leaf, fresh and dry weight of stem, fresh and dry weight of sheath, fresh and dry weight of ear as well as fresh and dry forage yield and  its quality. Results showed significant difference in 1% level for all of traits except length of growth period. The results of factor analysis using principal component analysis after varimax rotation showed that there are four main factors including forage quality (28.78%), forage yield (19.96%), morphologic characteristics (12.18%) and physiologic characteristics (12.13%) explained totally 73.05% changes of variance. Based on the bi-plot of the first and second principal components, genotypes No. 2, 17, 4 and 12 identified as top cultivars. The result of cluster analysis in two ways of Ward and Average distance was suggested to separate all of cultivars in three distinct clusters.