Evaluation of Morphological Diversity in South Indian Tea Clones Using Statistical Methods

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.