• Journal of agriculture & life science
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.25-33
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• 2011

This study was conducted to examine genetic variation on leaf characteristics of Machilus thunbergii populations. Ten populations were subjected to multivariate analysis for 9 characteristics of leaf morphology. Average length of leaf blade, leaf width, petiole length, vein number were 9.8cm, 4.0cm, 1.8cm, 8.4 respectively, while angle of leaf base and leaf apex were $67.9^{\circ}$ and $78^{\circ}$ respectively. The coefficient of variation (C.V.) on leaf characteristics was 20% which indicate similar features among the populations. Nested analysis showed statistically signigicant differences among populations as well as among individuals within populations. Genetic relationship between populations using complete linkage method showed four groups to Euclidean distance 1.2 and did not show a tendency to cluster into the same group. There were three principal components that had a meaningful eigenvalue over 1.0 among the 9 components. The explanatory power of the top three main components on the total variation was 92.8%. The first principal component (PC) was explained about 40.3% which is mainly correlated with maximum leaf width and the second PC was explained about 28.7% which is correlated with leaf blade length. The third PC was explained about 23.8% which is correlated with petiole length ($X_3$). These characters were important factors for analysis of the relationship among natural populations of M. thunbergii.