Assessment of seedling traits on Moringa peregrina (Forssk.) Fiori with analyzing vegetative characteristics interrelationships

Moringa peregrina (Forssk.) Fiori is one of the neglected Moringa species which is growing in a wide area of southeast part of Iran. The research was carried out by studying seedling growth parameters on 310 Moringa peregrina seedlings to investigate interrelationship between the growth parameters and their possible effects on seedling growth. Therefore, seed was collected from 21 single plants of the species across its habitats in southeast part of the country. Seedlings were grown in greenhouse conditions on which several seedling growth parameters were recorded after seedling establishment. The recorded data were analyzed based on completely randomized design model to assess the differences between the mother plants. To confirm the differences between the sampled single trees, all the possible paired correlation coefficients were estimated. To select the parameters specified by multiple regression analysis, path analysis was performed to investigate the direct and indirect relations between the independent parameters and plant height as the dependent parameter. Principal components analysis was also used to assess the interrelationship between the growth parameters. To classify the progenies of the single plants, the first and second components of the analysis were plotted and the results of the plot were compared to the results of cluster analysis. All the recorded traits showed a significant positive correlation with seedling height. Dividing the phenotypic correlation to the direct and indirect effects revealed that several traits affect the dependent parameters positively direct and negatively indirect, through other recorded growth parameters. Traits such as leaflet width with a positive simple correlation to the seedling height, showed a negative direct effect on the dependent parameter.