Morphological characterization and diversity analysis of some BARI released potato varieties

Twenty-nine potato varieties released by Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) were characterized at Breeder Seed Production Centre (BSPC), Debigonj, Bangladesh in 2012-13 and 2013-14 based on the Potato Descriptor IBPGR. Quantification of variability for each character done by Shannon-Weaver Diversity Index was subjected to Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCO) and Cluster Analysis. The qualitative characters exhibited low variation while the quantitative characters showed high variation. The Pooled values showed medium variability (0.596). The genotypes were grouped into five clusters. Cluster II had thirteen genotypes, while cluster IV and V had two each. The highest inter-cluster distance was observed between II and IV, while the lowest was III and V. The highest intra-cluster distance was found in cluster I. The inter-genotype distance was the highest between BARI Alu-22 and BARI Alu-41, and the lowest was between BARI Alu-42 and BARI Alu-34. The varieties of cluster IV earned the highest mean value for days to 80% emergence, foliage coverage, plant vigor, primary stem/hill, secondary leaflet and primary leaflet pairs. First four principal components accounted for 93.35% of the total variation. From the scree plot, four sample principal components effectively summarized the total variance. Results of PCA showed a reduction of the sixteen original variables into four linear values. The first principal components (PC1) can be considered as plant height and leaf, indicated by high loadings for plant height at 60 days after planting (DAP) (0.983), leaf length (0.133) and leaf width (0.099).