Assessment of Agro- Morphological Diversity among Populations of Achillea nobilis L. and Achillea aleppica DC. in Iran

Achillea is one of the important medicinal plants in Iran which has been used widely in medicinal, cosmetic and health care industries. Agro-morphological diversity of wild populations of Achillea nobilis L. subsp. neilreichii and A. aleppica DC. subsp. aleppica was investigated. The investigated traits were: plant height, plant diameter, flower diameter, number of flowers and fresh and dry weight. Results showed that there are significant differences between populations, and some populations showed distinctively better results than the others. In A. nobilis, Population "Gilan7" showed highest amount and "Semnan" showed the lowest amount for different agro-morphological traits. Correlation effect analysis of A. nobilis Populations showed that there are significant positive correlation between yield (average fresh weight of each plant) and flower diameter. This is the only correlation found between vegetative and reproductive traits. Cluster analysis grouped A. nobilis populations into 5 clusters. The valuable by-product of Achillea is mainly located in the flowers and top part of the flowering stems so cluster 4 and 5 contained most desirable populations because they had highest amount of flowers and flower diameter. In A. aleppica, "Elam" population with high amount of flowers (8.17) and lowest amount for plant diameter is a Superior population because it let us to have more plant in a unit area and produce. These results are very helpful for improving and introducing more suitable varieties.