Maejo International Journal of Science and Technology
Abstract
Morphological diversity of three Camellia (Theaceae) taxa conserved in an ex situ gene
bank was studied and the importance of different descriptors in categorising accessions into distinct
groups was also determined. Twelve accessions were characterised using 15 morphological
descriptors of IPGRI guidelines. The results of principal component analysis (PCA) on
morphological characters showed that the first two principal components accounted for 44.77 % of
the total variance. In the evaluated quantitative characters, all three taxa had a coefficient of variation
(CV) greater than 24.85%, and within the taxon the CV was greater than 9.59%. The qualitative
characters showed a wide range of variations and yielded significant differences (p<0.05). Phenotypic
data had high contributing component loadings from characters such as leaf area, weight of harvested
shoots, stem colour, leaf pubescence and young shoot colour. Cluster analysis delineated the
accessions into three groups. The implications of our results hold promise for assessing genetic
diversity in germplasm collections, which is a prerequisite for their utilisation, effective management
and crop improvement