Study on seed morphological diversity in sunflower recombinant inbred lines using multivariate analysis

This study was conducted to evaluate genetic variation among 70 sunflower recombinant inbred lines (RIL) derived from the crosses PAC2 × RHA266 together with parents based on seed morphological traits by using a rectangular lattice design with two replications. Seed morphological such as kernel length، kernel width، kernel diameter، 100-kernel weight، percentage of hull، percentage of dehulled kernel and seed yield per plant was measured. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences among lines for the studied traits. The highest coefficient of phenotypic variation was observed for seed yield per plant (23. 42) and the lowest one was observed for percentage of dehulled kernel (1. 37). The highest heritability was observed for 100-kernel weight (0. 995) and kernel width (0. 990) and the lowest one was observed for the yield per plant (0. 521). The highest correlation coefficients were observed between kernel diameter and kernel width (0. 908). Principal component analysis reduced the seed characteristics traits to 2 components explaining 81% accumulative variance. By using Ward clustering method based on seed morphological traits the 72 studied sunflower lines were classified into six groups.