Principal Component Analysis of fast growing willow clones for quantitative traits under short rotation forestry.

摘要

Twenty-five promising clones of willow collected from five countries were selected on the basis of initial clonal trial. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was employed taking 12 important parameters, proved useful in extracting the most important factors. Three principal components contributed 83.49% variance. First principal component contributed 59.55% for ten characters followed by second principal component 12.6% for plant height and third one 11.33% for leaf area. In the first PCA high loadings for traits such as total dry weight (0.966), total fresh weight (0.953), shoot fresh weight (0.928), shoot dry weight (0.921) and root fresh weight (0.901) represented those which are important for selection and further improvement of willow. The study reveals that maximum weightage should be given to total dry weight due to its maximum variable loading for the initial selection of clones followed by plant height for the biomass improvement of willow.