Morpho-physiological characterization of advanced hybrid genotypes of potato

Thirteen advanced potato genotypes developed by TCRC were characterized for 24 qualitative and 16 quantitative traits and analyzed for diversity by PCO, PCA, and Cluster analysis. Qualitative traits showed low variability (0.34), which Quantitative traits showed medium-high variation (0.67). The pooling of all traits showed a medium type index (0.51). The genotypes were grouped into four clusters. Cluster I had six genotypes, while cluster II and IV had only one. The highest inter-cluster distance was observed between clusters II and III and the lowest was between clusters III and IV. The highest intracluster distance was found in cluster I, whereas Cluster II (0.00) and cluster IV (0.00) showed the lowest. The highest inter-genotype distance was between genotypes 8.46 and 7.33 (33.79), and the lowest was between 7.86 and 7.48 (5.70). The genotypes of cluster I earned the highest mean values for foliage coverage, plant vigor and tuber numbers/hill. Cluster II produced the highest means for plant vigor, primary stem/hill, leaf length, leaf width, leaflet blade length, blade width, lateral leaflet blade length, width, tuber weight/hill, and tuber yield. The first three PCA counted for 91.75% of the total variation, whereas the first one accounted for 69.47%. From the scree plot, three principal sample components effectively summarized the total variance. Results of PCA showed the reduction of the 16 original variables to three independent linear combinations of PCA. The number of tubers/hill contributed maximum towards divergence.