The Cluster and Principal Component Analyses of Maize Landraces of Manipur, India

Abstract

The experiment comprises of 42 landraces accession of Manipur and were assessed for 28 quantitative morphological characters. These characters were evaluated by employing cluster and principle component analysis to obtain suitable parents. The analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the accessions for all the traits. The accession CAUCH 57 and CAUCH 69 has a maximum elucidation distance with the majority of accession collected indicating they are quite different from the rest of the collected landraces accession. Three broad clusters were formed in the dendogram produced by the morphological data. The principal component analysis of 28 morphological traits accounted for 80.47% of the total variation. The current study of maize landraces accounted for total eight principal components having eigen value greater than 1. The first principal component explained the highest 26.44% of the total variation. The results showed that the germplasm having a wide genetic diversity can be thus utilized for future breeding programme.