Phenotypic diversity of plant morphological and root descriptor traits within a sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam., germplasm collection from Tanzania

Abstract

In Tanzania sweet potato ranks as the third most important crop after cassava and potato. We studied the phenotypic diversity of morphological plant and root descriptor traits in accessions of the sweet potato germplasm collection of Sokoine University of Agriculture, Morogoro and Sugarcane Research Institute, Kibaha, Tanzania, using phenotypic characters. A total number of 105 sweet potato accessions of different geographic origins were studied in field trials of The Sugarcane Research Institute at Kibaha Tanzania, and data were recorded for 27 phenotypic characters. Estimates of pair-wise phenotypic similarities using the Manhattan coefficient varied from 0.023 to 0.814, with a mean of 0.285. Cluster analysis was conducted using the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) and Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCO). The clustering of phenotypic data resulted in a dendrogram which was discordant with geographic origin and AFLP data. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed highly significant variation among the accessions for 21 out of the 27 characters studied. Phenotypic analyses revealed a wider range of variability than AFLP analyses. Comparison of molecular and phenotypic data using the Mantel test showed a very low correlation (r 2 = 0.0007). Molecular and phenotypic classifications are discordant, and both are necessary to classify the germplasm correctly and to clarify genetic relationships among sweet potato accessions.

Morpho-agronomic and simple sequence repeat-based diversity in colored rice (Oryza sativa L.) germplasm from peninsular India

“…Similar results on lack of correlation between these two analyses have also been reported earlier in other species by many studies (e.g. RoldanRuiz et al 2001;Solis et al 2007;Elameen et al 2010). …”

Assessment on performance and variability in different sweet orange (Citrus sinensis Obseck) cultivars under Punjab conditions

“…Morphological study is an essential tool for the assessment of diversity and classification. Even today, morphological study is being considered and has been deployed as an initial step for cultivar identification and diversity assessment with watermelon (Huh et al, 2008), sweet potato (Elameen et al, 2010) and agave (Rodrguez et al, 2009). Furthermore, important horticultural characters are reported to be controlled by multiple genes (Campos et al, 2005, Liu andDeng 2007) and are of low heritability.…”

Genetic divergence among white-type acai palm accessions based on morpho-agronomic characters

“…In most of collections, the morphological and agronomic characters stand out because of their low costs and ease in being detected and quantified (Andrade et al, 2011), especially the morphological ones, which are less affected by the environment and present a high heritability (Elameen et al, 2011;Vieira et al, 2013). These descriptors are fundamental to reveal the characteristics of new genetic materials, besides affecting decisively the choice of varieties by farmers and other interested parties.…”