Morphological variation in wide cron collections of Morelos state, Mexico

Abstract

In 2017, the area of wide corn cultivation of the pozolero race was 8,114 hectares nationwide, with an average yield of 3.92 t ha-1. The state of Morelos allocates 3,814 hectares for the production of said grain with yields of 2.94 t ha-1; the municipalities where they are grown are Totolapan, Yecapixtla, Atlatlahucan, Ocuituco and Tlayacapan, with an area of 1090, 930, 855, 355 and 258 hectares respectively, the altitudes range from 1580 to 1920 meters above sea level. For this study, collections were carried out in municipalities with presence of native germplasm, from the state of Morelos, the State of Mexico and Puebla. The objective of the present work was to estimate the morphological variation between the wide-pounder maize collections using quantitative and qualitative variables. The experimental design was completely randomized, using tukey means analysis. The experimental unit consisted of 10 repetitions and 34 treatments, 11 quantitative and 5 qualitative variables were measured. The analysis of variance showed highly significant differences for the 16 variables measured, the first five main components explain 90%, of the variation the three component was represented by five quantitative variables that were, row number, ear diameter, ear diameter, grain length and grain width-length ratio. With respect to the morphological distribution of the variables under study, the results showed groups of collections with respect to the color of grain, color of coppice, diameter of coppice, diameter of ear, length of cobs, length of grain, thickness of grain and number of rows. The genetic diversity in large Creole maize populations that were collected in Morelos, is a product of genetic flow.