Study the genetic diversity of different chamomile landraces using morphological and phonological traits

Chamomile is one of the most important medicinal plants in the world trade with many applications in pharmaceutical, cosmetic and sanitary industrials. In order to evaluate the genetic diversity of 26 landraces, collected from different regions of Iran, based on morphological and phenological characters, the experiment were conducted in augmented design with 6 controls and 3 replications. Results showed that characters of the economical yield, harvest index, fresh weight of 50 flowers and dry weight of 50 flowers had maximum phenotypic variation coefficients, respectively. The phenological traits had the lowest of variation coefficients. The genetic masses based on cluster analysis, were settled in five groups with different agronomic traits. Results also indicated that the masses intra groups were different and the genetic diversity was not according to the geographical diversity. Analysis variance analysis for groups of cluster analysis showed that the differences among different groups for all of traits are significant. Factor analysis with principle component method using 14 characters three correlated factors were recognized justifying 82.37% of the total variation. The first, second and third were related to flowers yield, phenological traits and biological yield, respectively. According to the results, in order to increase the yield of dry flowers per plant, the traits such as economic yield, dry weight of 50 flowers, fresh weight of 50 flowers, harvest index and number of flowers per plant should be used as selection criteria.