Nine quantitative agro-morphological characters were studied in nine genotypes of Detarium microcarpum to determine the level and patterns of variation among the genotypes at the nursery stage for breeding record. The genotypes were grown at the Nursery of National Centre for Genetic Resources and Biotechnology, Ibadan, Nigeria. Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Single Linkage Cluster Analysis (SLCA) were employed to analyze the variation in these genotypes. The result showed that there are variations among the genotypes with respect to number of branches (NoB), number of leaves (NoL), germination percentage (G%), internode distance (ID), seedling girth (SG), leaf length (LL) and leaf width (LW). The first principal components axis accounted for 69.86% of total variation observed among the nine genotypes while the first two principal components axes accounted for 86.62%. SLCA further summarized the relationship among the genotypes into four clusters; cluster 1 (BA-T, KW-AL, JG-D, KD-B, KN-S, PL-J), cluster 2 (KB-Y), cluster 3 (OY-I) and cluster 4 (NG-K) with cluster 2, 3, and 4 genotypes as distinct clusters but clusters 3 and 4 are most distinct of all the genotypes. This implies that cluster 3 and cluster 4 can be used as male parents to cross cluster 1 and cluster 2 to improve the characters such as NoB, NoL, G%., ID, SG, LL, and LW.
Keywords: Clusters, Genetic diversity; Detarium microcarpum; Agro-morphological Characters; Seedlings, Genotypes, PCA, SLCA
