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Turkish Journal of Agriculture and Forestry

Abstract

Desert wheat grass (Agropyron desertorum Fisch. ex Link) is a valuable species in the temperate zones that exhibits tolerance to cold and drought and naturally grows in arid and semiarid regions of Iran. This research was conducted to investigate the phenotypic diversity of 50 selected genotypes of Iranian A. desertorum based on several agromorphological traits and forage production. Genotypes were planted in a randomized complete block design with four replications in 2016. The results showed highly significant differences among genotypes for all traits (p < 0.01). Broad-sense heritability estimates ranged from low to medium for the evaluated traits. The highest heritability values were observed for crown diameter, plant height (PH) and dry matter yield (DMY), while the genetic advance (GA) values were found for forage fresh weight and DMY. Selection based on traits with high GA and heritability is expected to be effective, indicating sufficient genetic variation for breeding programs. The number of stems (NS) and PH explained more than 73% of the entire variation in DMY in the stepwise multiple linear regression analysis. Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) revealed that the first three coordinates (PCo1–PCo3) explained 82.4% of the phenotypic variation. According to the PCoA plot based on these coordinates, the genotypes were grouped into two groups. In the factor analysis (FA), factor 1 (FAC1) had a positive relationship with forage yield and NS; therefore, it was identified as a biomass factor. Cluster analysis divided the genotypes into two groups: cluster 1 contained 19 genotypes, and cluster 2 consisted of 31 genotypes. Significant phenotypic diversity was detected among the A. desertorum genotypes, indicating a valuable germplasm to employ in forage varietal improvement programs. Furthermore, the examined genotypes can serve as valuable germplasm for development of a core collection of A. desertorum in Iran.

Author ORCID Identifier

REZA MOHAMMADI: 0000-0002-5806-1135

ALIREZA POURMOHAMMAD: 0000-0002-8152-2956

MELİH OKÇU: 0000-0001-5213-2169

DOI

10.55730/1300-011X.3494

Keywords

Combined ANOVA, genetic advance, heritability, multivariate analysis

First Page

655

Last Page

667

Publisher

The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye (TÜBİTAK)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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