Abstract:
Squash is one of the most important crops in Tunisia. It showed great diversity in morphological
characteristics, particularly leaf length and width, peduncle length, fruit weight, fruit shape,
floral scar ratio, skin thickness, flesh thickness, fruit colour and seed shape. In the present
research, 31 accessions of squash were collected from different provinces of Tunisia and
phenotypic diversity in their fruit characters was assessed. The collection showed appreciable
phenotypic variation in all the traits. Principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster were
performed to determine relationships among populations and to obtain information about those
fruit characters for the definition
of groups. The first two principal component axes accounted for 62.20% of the total multivariate
variation among the accessions. The greater part of variance was accounted for by floral scar
raio, leaf length, leaf width and flesh thickness. Cluster analysis identified four different groups.
The morphological characterization will be helpful to curators in the management and
improvement of squash germplasm in Tunisia |
