Investigating genetic diversity and classification of diverse wheat genotypes using multivariate analysis methods

This experiment was conducted to investigate and evaluate the phenotypic and genotypic diversity of a population including of 94 doubled-haploids lines, their parents and five Iranian local bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars. Thirteen agronomic and morphologic traits were recorded including; grain yield per unit area, harvest index, spike length, seed number per spike, spikelet density, total tiller number, fertile & infertile tiller number, flag leaf length & width, plant height and number of node during four cultivation years (2006-2009) at field conditions using lattice design. The results of canonical discriminate analysis (CDA) showed that two canonical variables (components) were significant, where the 1st canonical variables including; seed number per spike(0.68), tiller number(-0.19), spikelet density(-0.4), 100 grain weight(0.33), spike length(0.3), fertile tiller number(-0.19) and grain yield(0.27), had a great contribution(0.85) in fractionating the cultivars because these trait had the most coefficients of function 1(irrespective to related sign). Moreover, the canonical factors which had important role classify were used to the groups. Cluster analysis could also categorize the cultivars in accordance to the results of CDA. In this study, the CDA has been effectively utilized to investigate genetic diversity of agronomic traits, which had the best interpretation of traits of diversity among cultivars.