Grouping of Agropyron tauri populations based on morphological traits

In order to study the grouping of Agropyron tauri populations, 13 populations were investigated in a randomized complete blocks design with three replications. The study was performed in research field of Islamic Azad University of Tabriz in 2010. In this study, a number of traits including plant height, tiller number, leaf number, flag leaf length, first leaf length, second leaf length, first internode length, second internode length, crown cover, fresh yield, dry yield, fresh weight of single plant and dry weight per plant were evaluated. Analysis of variance showed significant differences among populations for all measured traits. Thirteen populations were classified into three clusters by cluster analysis of standardized data, based on Euclidean distance and Ward method. This result was in consistent with the height of geographic regions from which populations were collected. In principal components analysis, four components were introduced, and the traits of fresh and dry yield showed high and positive coefficients in first component. Results of cluster analysis were confirmed by results of principal components analysis.