Principal Component Analysis of Progenies of Selected Mother Trees of Drek (Melia Azedarach) for Quantitative Traits

Mature seeds were collected from twenty seven mother trees (ortets) Melia azedarach selected at 27 sites, one ortet each at one site, from Himachal Pradesh and part of Punjab and their progenies were raised. Principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out taking 17 important parameters, proved useful in extracting the most important factors. Four principal components contributed 81.73% of total variance. First principal component contributed 44.51 % of total variation whereas the second component accounted for 21.69 % variation, the third explains 9.23 % of variation and the fourth component accounted for 6.24 % of the variation. In the first PCA high loadings for traits such as fresh shoot weight (0.916), dry shoot weight (0.911), dry ischolar_main weight (0.859), ischolar_main length (0.841), seedling height (0.773) and number of leaves (0.764) represented those which are important for selection and further improvement of the species. The study revealed that maximum weightage should be given to fresh shoot weight due to its maximum variable loading for the initial selection of progenies followed by dry shoot weight for the biomass improvement of the species.