ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN SPINACH (Spinacia oleracea L.) USING SOME MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS

Spinach is a leafy green vegetable cultivated in most part of the world due to its nutritive and medicinal value. Fifty-one germplasm of spinach (Spinacia oleracea L.) collected from diverse geographical region of Bangladesh were evaluated to assess their diversity using several qualitative and quantitative characters. Variation was found in all the characters except Inflorescence color and seed type. Leaf shape was exhibited as elliptic, broad elliptic, ovate and broad ovate where elliptic shape was found in maximum germplasm. The highest quantitative variation was observed in edible leaf weight per plant followed by petiole length and number of lateral branches. Germplasm TRMR-95, NT-34, TRMR-136, NRI-121 had longer leaf and NRI121, TRMR-136, RC-139, TRMR-12 and NT-33 had broader leaf. Germplasm RC-139 had highest number of lateral branches. The germplasm NQ-68 required maximum days for bolting which was followed by TRMR-136 and RNF-126 that was most important characters for spinach. The dendrogram shown that the maximum thirty-six germplasm were grouped into cluster I and Cluster IV was occupied by only one germplasm. The maximum cluster mean value was observed in Cluster II for the characters leaf length, leaf width and edible leaf weight per plant. The first PC explained 37.10% of the total variability and the second PC explained 22.90% of the variation among fifty-one spinach germplasm. Populations with high scores for the first eigenvectors are leaf length (0.4860), leaf width (0.4827) and petiole length (0.4792) these traits were the most important contributors towards diversity of the germplasm in PC1. Considering leaf characters and bolting time, germplasm TRMR-136, TRMR-144, R-342, RNF-26, NQ-68 and RC-139 were selected for future breeding program.