Genetic diversity in pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) genetic resources collected from the Aegean Region as revealed by agro-morphological traits

In this study morphological characterization was carried out on 61 different pepper populations collected from Aegean Region (Kütahya, Afyon, Uşak, İzmir and Manisa provinces) in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and on 3 different pepper varieties. All populations were characterized in terms of 37 morphological features. Morphological data were analyzed by cluster and principal component analyses. The first 14 components with co-efficient values greater than 1.0 together explained 79.10% of the total variance present in the data set. The greater part of variation was accounted for by characters such as fruit shape at pedicel attachment, fruit width, fruit pedicel thickness, stem lenght, stem color, calyx pigmentation and fruit color at intermediate stage. Scores of the first three components which accounted for 37.84% of the total variation were highly correlated to characters related fruit shape at pedicel attachment, fruit width, fruit pedicel thickness, stem length, stem color, calyx pigmentation and fruit color at intermediate stage. A wide variation was observed among the populations. As a result of the clustering analysis, 2 main groups and 5 subgroups were formed. There were 2 subgroups in the first main group and 3 subgroups in the second main group and pepper accessions were identified according to this analysis.