morphological characteristics, genetic diversity and classification of chrysanthemum genotypes

Chrysanthemum is one of the most important ornamental plants. The genus chrysanthemum is a popular cut flower, medicinal and pot plant. Morphological traits such as cut rooting and leaf characteristics and genetic diversity among 50 genotypes of chrysanthemum morifolium were analyzed. Based on analysis of variance of data all traits in the studied genotypes showed significant differences at 1% level. The results of correlation coefficient indicated a positive and significant correlation between stem length, leaf length, leaf width and leaf serration number.The leaf length showed the highest correlation (r = +0.90**) with leaf width. Results showed that stem length and petiole length had the highest (h2>80%) heritability. Cluster analysis according to the morphological traits using the Ward method classified all the genotypes into six groups. In this classification, two genotypes (‘Takapo’ and ‘Poloneh’) were classified into one cluster that was characterized by tall stem and low branch number. In this study, canonical discriminant analysis of 20 morphological traits revealed that 3 canonical discriminant variables explained 89.6% of the total variation among genotypes. Results revealed that among the studied traits, number of cutting root, leaf size, petiol length, stem length, number of branches and number of offsets were the most important traits for discriminating among chrysanthemum genotypes. The results of this study indicate that these traits are useful for selecting and identify superior genotypes of chrysanthemum germplasm. Using some of the genotypes belonging to cluster A (with a small size of plant) and genotypes belonging to cluster E (with a large size of plant) as parents can be practiced as a criteria for breeding programs.