Morpho-physiological characterization and principal component analysis for agronomic traits in tetraploid potato germplasm
摘要
About 357 potato accessions, comprising advanced breeding lines, exotic germplasm, and varieties, were conducted in India's sub-tropical Himalayan area, during two consecutive winter seasons (2021–2022 and 2022–2023). Phenotypic data of 15 agro-morphological attributes were recorded. Tuber yield and its associated attributes showed significant genetic diversity. Results indicated that Kufri Garima, CP 3585, CP 1767, CP 2390 and CP 1989 were the superior/desirable genotypes mainly due to producing the high numbers of tubers per plant and tuber weight. Besides, CP 4214, CP 3792 and CP 2339 showed a high number of stems per hill than, increasing the number of tubers per plant. The four most informative principal components with multiple eigenvalues were identified via principal component analysis. All PCs accounted for 68% of the variation across all attributes. PC1 contributes 31.90% of total variance, followed by PC2 which contributes 15%. PCA results showed that Kufri Gaima, CP 3585, CP 1767, CP 2390, CP 1989, JEX/A 202, JEX/A 275, JEX/A 459 and JEX/A 19 are the highly diverse genotypes. The traits viz., plant height, number of leaves per plant, leaflet length, leaflet width and leaf width, tuber length, tuber width, tuber weight and yield per plant are important for consideration during the potato improvement program.