VARIATION AND ASSOCIATION ANALYSES ON MORPHOLOGICAL CHARACTERS OF LINSEED (LINUM USITATISSIMUM L.) IN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Morphological studies of linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.) of Ethiopia were undertaken
in this study on 56 accessions collected from 10 administrative regions (former regions) classified into
seven altitude classes. The seeds were planted during 2001 growing season in Bale-Goro “wereda”
using randomized complete block design (RCBD) on three replications with the aim of investigating the
morphological diversity in the accessions. Over the entire accession, except seed number per boll, all the
characters showed significant variation. However, regional groups of linseed accessions showed
insignificant variations only for secondary branches number per plant (SBP), days to flowering (DTF) and
days to maturity (DTM) among themselves, and altitudinal groups of linseed accessions only for seed
number per boll (SNB) and days to flowering (DTF). The analysis for coefficient of variation and cluster
analysis showed that accessions from Gojam and Tigray were less diversified. About 53% of the total
associations showed significant correlation and out of this 71% of the correlations were with the
positive significant correlation coefficients. Cluster analysis indicates that accessions collected from the
two extremes of altitude classes have variations for the studied traits. It is only Tigray Region that did
not contribute member accession to cluster III, whereas Gondar and Bale regions contribute member
accessions to 80% of clusters. Factor analysis showed that of the total variation (73.86%) 30.04% and
27.29% were accounted for by first and second principal components, respectively. The highest
Shannon diversity index (0.322±0.039) was recorded for boll size and Shannon diversity index for
overall pooled mean was 0.223±0.063