Sweet potatoes are an alternative carbohydrate source to alleviate rice shortages caused by climate change. This study was conducted with the aim of evaluating the genetic diversity of sweet potato agro-morphological traits. Seventy genotypes as well as two controlled trial treatments were performed using augmented design at the Mechara Agricultural Research Center. Of the total genotypes evaluated, 40.28% had a commercial yield significantly higher than the overall average of genotypes ranging from 15.83 to 44.17 tons/ha and 29 genotypes had the total yield/ha significantly higher than the average for all genotypes. Yield of sweet potato (ton/ha) has a positive and high correlation with number of roots per plant, root diameter, number of sold roots and sales yield (ton/ha). Principal component analysis shows that five principal components have eigenvalues greater than one was contributes 79.1% total variation. The traits that contributed the most to diversity were total yield, number of marketable tubers per hectare, marketable yield, number of roots per plant, and number of unsold able roots per hectare. The meta-analysis based on agro-morphological characteristics was grouped into five groups. The Euclidean genetic distance between clusters ranged from 4.3 to 9.5 among the evaluated sweet potato genotypes. The highest intergroup distances were observed between groups V and I, followed by between groups IV and V. High intergroup distances indicate a greater likelihood of achieving violation and maximal dissociation heterozygosis by crossing genotypes belonging to different groups because of the greater distance between groups. It is likely that different genotypes contribute to the desired unique traits. Overall, from this study results suggested the existence of significant genetic diversity among Sweet potato genotypes for agro-morphological traits that could serve as an important gene source for genetic improvement of sweet potato in the future.
Keywords: Cluster Analysis, Genetic diversity, Principal Component Analysis
