Agronomic traits analysis and evaluation of introduced flax germplasm based on principal components and cluster analysis

Principal components analysis and cluster analysis of 256 introduced flax germplasm were carried out based on 8 main agronomic traits.The major results were∶ 1) The variations of 8 main agronomic traits ranged from 17.51% to 92.43%,which indicated that the diversity of materials was significant.2) The principal components analysis showed that the first four PCs,which might be regarded as grain yield component factor(33.85%),plant height factor(25.95%),1 000-seeds weight factor(16.32%) and seeds per fruit factor(12.05%),account for 88.17% of variation among the cultivars.3) Through cluster analysis,all cultivars were classified into six groups at the level of D=34.42.The 76 cultivars with excellent agronomic traits were mostly in Group III and group IV.