Morphological, Agronomic and Biochemical Characterization of Trifolium Steudneri Schweinf., An Indigenous Species in Ethiopia
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Date
2002-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Characterization of forage gemlplasm is an essential prerequisite for use of forage genetic
resources. Fifty accessions of TrifoliulIl steudlleri Schweinf. were studied for 14
morphological quantitative characters, 9 morphological qualitative characters and 6
agronomic characters. Spatial distribution of collection sites of accessions was checked
using DIY A-GIS. Cluster analysis grouped the accessions into six groups, where the sixth
group had only one member, accession number 9452. A scatter plot made from the first and
second factors of the factor analysis, which explains 33% of the total variation, and also the
isozyme analysis indicated this accession to be an outlier. A high correlation was observed
between characters such as days to 50% flowering and 75% maturity, and leaf width and
stipule length. Accession number 9452 was found to show a higher value of Mahalanobis
distance, showing this accession is distantly related to the others. Taking eight agronomic
characters, accessions were grouped into three groups of high, medium and low
productivity. The percentage frequency of phenotypic classes of the accessions for the
regions and altitude group and respective chi-square values for eight qualitative characters
were calculated. The overall diversity index was calculated to be 0.40 ± 0.07. Higher
heritability values were observed for most of the quantitative morphological characters
except for stem thickness and flower width. Four enzyme systems, Peroxidase, Acid
phosphatase, a-Esterase and p-Esterase, were used in the isozyme study, indicating the
percentage of polymorphic loci ranges from 64.7 to 47.1. The isozyme clustering was found
to match with the morphological clustering.
Key words: Characterization, TrifoliulII steudlleri, cluster analysis, factor
analysis, isozyme analysis, heritability, polymorphic loci, GIS
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Keywords
Characterization, TrifoliulII steudlleri, cluster analysis, factor analysis, isozyme analysis, heritability, polymorphic loci, GIS