Characterizes phenotypic diversity in a segregating population of Stevia rebaudiana, suggesting new candidates for agricultural production.
Key Points
The aim is to characterize and structure the phenotypic diversity in a segregating population of Stevia rebaudiana derived from the cultivar ‘Morita II’.
Evaluated 87 genotypes including 86 progeny-derived and 1 commercial control under tropical field conditions.
Assessed using 25 agromorphological descriptors, both qualitative and quantitative.
Applied multivariate analyses including PCA and hierarchical clustering based on Gower distance.
Observed significant variation in quantitative traits, including plant height (28.26–119.50 cm) and dry yield rate (0.94–28.55 g plant−1).
Identified four distinct phenotypic groups through hierarchical clustering.
The first two principal components accounted for 32.23% of the total phenotypic variance.
Cite This Study
Rodríguez-Páez et al. (2026) studied this question.