Genetic architecture of Moringa peregrina populations at early growth stage

Moringa peregrina is the only species of the Moringa genus, which is growing naturally, in Southeast part of Iran. The species has industrial and medicinal values as well as environmental importance, which is suffering genetic erosion in the nature. Seeds were sampled on single plants of six plant populations in the habitats of the species in the country. The seeds were sown and several early growth stage characteristics were recorded on the seedlings based on a statistical design. Since the single trees of each plant population were not the same also the progenies of each single mother plants were not the same, the collected data were analyzed based on a nested model. Results of the analysis revealed that the plant populations were not significantly different based on the studied seedling characteristics and the majority of the differences belonged to within populations rather than between populations. Using expected mean squares, the results of analysis of variance were divided to their components. The analysis also showed that trees within population component of variance were stronger than the other components and the population component was not remarkable. Although the growth characteristics of the tree species would be more visible on higher ages of the trees, but the negligible genetic variation of the characteristics on the valuable species may be due to genetic erosion.