Morphological variation of some Lepidium draba and L. latifolium populations

Morphological variation of some Lepidium draba and L. latifolium populations

Hoary cress (Lepidium draba L.) and pepperweed (L. latifolium L.) are herb plants grown in a wild form across Iran, which considered as vegetable or medicinal crop. The evaluation of the Lepidium germplasm collections under field conditions is recognized as a general method to estimate phenetic variability. In the present study, phenetic diversity among five populations of hoary cress and eight populations of pepperweed was assessed using 12 agro-morphological traits. Multivariate analysis with principal component analysis (PCA) was done and a cluster dendrogram was generated based on Ward’s method. In L. draba, variation was observed among 3 out of 12 quantitative characters, whereas in L. latifolium significant differences were observed for all evaluated traits except leaf number. The populations Asadabad and Razan belonging to the L. latifolium species, showed major values for shoot fresh and dry weight, and leaf length and width, these should be used to improve these traits in a Lepidium breeding program. Based on cluster analysis, L. draba populations were classified in three groups, while for L. latifolium, two groups were obtained with few subgroups. The principal component analysis showed great dispersion of the populations. The first three principal component axes accounted for 94.8% and 90.6% of total variation observed among L. draba and L. latifolium populations, respectively. The phenetic diverse identified in this study show that some populations are featured with several agro-morphological characteristics and could be appropriate as promising material for the creation of new varieties.