Morphological characterization and principal component analysis of cowa (Garcinia cowa Roxb.) Germplasm

Garciania cowa Roxb. is a neglected underutilized minor fruit in Bangladesh. There are several types of Cowa found in different locations of the country. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the variations among different types of Cowa. To do so, five Cowa accessions were collected from Barishal and Patualkhali districts of Bangladesh to analyze the morphological variations among the germplasm and also conducted the principal component analysis (PCA) to determine the ideal amount of morphological characteristics that account for a large portion of variability. Morphological traits viz., leaf shape, base, apex, length, width, petiole length, diameter, flower characters, weight of fruit, length of fruit, diameter of fruit, seed number per fruit, length of seed, diameter and weight of seed were recorded. Wide variations were observed in leaf, fruits and seed characters of different Cowa germplasm. The longest leaves (15.70 cm), maximum fruit weight (30.56 g), highest fruit length (4.43 cm), diameter (3.90 cm) and highest seed weight (7.42 g) were found in ACS GC4. The number of seeds per fruit was minimum in cased of ACS GC3. PCA for 17 morphological characters of Cowa elucidated that four principle components with eigen values more than one accounted for 100 per cent of the total variability and the maximum variation was exhibited by the leaf length which accounted for 91.146%. From genotypic scatter plot, it was noticed that ACS GC3 has the highest variability as compared to other four germplasm. Based on the PCA and genotypic scatter plot, germplasm ACS GC3 can be a potential material for future varietal improvement program