Journal d'horticulture
Libre accès
ISSN: 2376-0354
ISSN: 2376-0354
Ebrahim Seid, Wassu Mohammed, Tessfaye Abebe
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is a versatile food crop and a source of cheap human diet in many countries. It can be used as fresh products and commercially processed foods such as French fries and chips. Research efforts carried out in Ethiopia related to processing quality were limited in their scope of quality parameters considered. Therefore, this experiment was conducted during the main rainy season of 2017 at Holetta with the objectives of the nature and magnitude to know genetic diversity and the characters contributing in potato genotypes and also to screen out genetically diverse parents for developing high yielding and quality potato by using cluster and principal component analysis. A total of 24 potato genotypes were evaluated for 23 quantitative and six qualitative traits in randomized complete block design with three replications. The first eight principal components accounted 90.26% for the observed variations among 24 potato genotypes. Of these, the first, the second and the third principal components constituted 28.69%, 18.74% and 13.00% of the variation, respectively. The genetic distances among the 24 potato genotypes ranged from 3.40 to 11.80 and the genotypes were grouped into eight clusters based on quantitative and qualitative traits. Cluster II consisted of 25%, Cluster IV, I, III contained 20.83%, 16.67% and 12.5% of genotypes, respectively, while Cluster VI, VII and VIII each consisted of one genotype. In conclusion, genotypes grouped under Cluster II and VIII worth further evaluation to obtain genotypes with highest total tuber yield, specific gravity of tuber, dry matter content, total starch content, acceptable tuber physical and frying quality with other desirable traits.