Relationship of morphological and agronomic traits in Iranian and exotic sainfoin populations using multivariate statistical analysis

Evaluation of genetic diversity and relationship among traits are an essential prerequisite for direct and indirect selection in plant breeding. This experiment was carried out to evaluate the relationship between morphological and agronomic traits and to classify 56 sainfoin accessions using multivariate statistical analysis methods during 2010-2011. Results of estimated correlation coefficients showed that dry matter yield had significant positive correlation with plant height، number of stem per plant and length of panicle. Whereas، there was a negative significant correlation between dry matter yield and leaf percent and leaf to stem ratio. On the basis of stepwise regression، number of stem per plant and plant height explained the majority of dry matter yield variation and leaf percent solely could justify 64% of forage palatability variation. Cluster analysis could separate Iranian and exotic sainfoin accessions on the base of morphological traits. Also accessions of similar geographic origin were mainly clustered in the same groups. Moreover، principle components analysis confirmed the result of cluster analysis. Finally results indicated that there was high variation for studied traits among Iranian and exotic sainfoin genotypes which can be useful to select suitable parents to produce synthetic varieties in breeding programs.