Study on Some Morphophenological Traits Related to Yield and Early Maturity in Quinoa Cultivars (Chenopodium quinoa, Wild.)

Background and objectives: Quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) is a member of Amaranthaceae family that originated in the Andean region in Bolivia, Chile and Peru five thousands of years and so it has a tiny and round seeds. Quinoa in different combinations of food used as food, as well as how to cook like rice grains and known as the Inca rice in the South American countries. The high nutritional value of quinoa grain or seed by virtue of comparison by the World Food Organization has been dry milk. According to quinoa tolerance to drought and salinity, the most important factor that quinoa suitable for cultivation in arid and desert-prone culture is early maturity because at the end of the growing season, drought is a major problem for quinoa culture, early maturity is an important strategy to reduce drought effects.
Materials and methods: In order to identify the variety with higher yield and early, five genotypes of the quinoa include of Ames13737 (QA1), Ames13724 (QA2), PI634919 (QP1), PI51055 (QP2) and PI665272 (QP3), planted in University of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources of Gorgan under greenhouse condition in a completely randomized design with five replications. Some different morphophenological traits related to yield (1000- grain weight, plant height, stem height, ear no. per main inflorescence and stem diameter) and early-maturity (germination (days), days to 4-leaf stage, days to inflorescence formation, days to inflorescence colouring, days to pollination, days to milky stage and days to physiological maturity) were evaluated.
Results: The results of analysis of variance indicated that evaluated genotypes had significant differences for six traits of twelve measured traits. Correlation coefficient analysis indicated that the highest positive significant correlation was observed between the days to flowering and days to panicule colouring change. The result of Euclidean distance matrix showed that QA1 with QP1 and QA1, QA2 and QP1 with each other, had the least genetic distance, the highest genetic distance was observed between QA1 and QP2. The results of principal component analysis (PCA) characterized three components that these justified 96.6% of the data variation. The first component justified (Yield) 45.5%, the second component (Germination) 40.4% and the third component (Height) 10.7 % of the total diversity of the data.
Conclusion: Based on cluster analysis, thousand grain weight and day to milky stage were identified as the most important factors affecting the choice of quinoa genotypes to improve early-maturity genotypes with greater yield. The results of principal component analysis showed that QA1, QA2 and QP1 selected for seed breeding programs and also QP2 based on its important growth traits, were fitted as a genotype is used in forage breeding programs.