Genetic Diversity of Coffee (Coffea arabica L.) Collections for Morpho-agronomic Traits in Southwestern Ethiopia

Background: Information on the genetic variability of plants on the basis population is important for conservation and utilization of genetic resources. However, information on such genetic diversity is not still yet available at individual level in Yayu coffee germplasm, southwestern Ethiopia.Objective: The study was conducted to estimate the genetic variability among coffee collections with respect to morpho-agronomic traits.Materials and Methods: Sixty-two Coffee (Coffea arabica L.) collections with two standard check varieties (74110 and 74112) were evaluated using 8 x 8 simple lattice design at Metu Agricultural Research Sub Center. The experiment was conducted on six-year old coffee trees during the 2018 main cropping seasons. The coffee trees were managed as per the recommendation for coffee production practices.Results: Cluster analysis was employed using 19 quantitative traits and 64 coffee collections grouped into seven clusters. Significant inter cluster-distance was found between most of the paired clusters. The results revealed the chance of developing hybrids by crossing coffee collections from cluster-V and VI followed by cluster-IV and VI. Principal component analysis revealed that, the first seven principal components with Eigen values exceeding one were responsible for about 74.94 % of the observed variation among the coffee collections. Out of the entire variations, the first and the second principal components accounted for more than one-third of the total variation (35.32 %).Conclusion: The information and genetic variability obtained in the present study could be used to plan conservation, effective pure line selection, and crossing of coffee germplasm in future coffee improvement programs