Morphoagronomic Evaluation of the Genetic Diversity of Local Maize Varieties in La Palma (original) (raw)

In order to characterize maize diversity under low input conditions, maize landraces were collected from nine farmers in "El Tejar-la Jocuma" community, La Palma, Pinar del Rio. 15 ears per farmer were evaluated according to quantitative and qualitative characters, following the approaches of specialized maize describers. Landraces were grouped by a Cluster Analysis, starting from the evaluated quantitative characters. Qualitative characters were analyzed according to a descriptive statistics. Parents and its half sib families were evaluated by a detailed analysis between and within farmers; whereas a multivariate analysis was applied to ear quantitative variables. A wide variation was detected for most variables analyzed, which supposes a wide genetic diversity of the materials with potential adaptation to low input conditions. The existing differences among peasants should be highlighted, either for parents' or for progenies'analyses (half siblings), suggesting t...