Phenotypic characterization of Amaro coffee (Coffea arabica L.) local accessions using multi-variate techniques at Awada, Southern Ethiopia

As a country of origin of coffee, Ethiopia is endowed with an immense diversity of the crop in its diverse coffee-growing agro-ecologies. Amaro Kelo is one of the major coffee production agro-ecologies in Ethiopia, where the genetic diversity of its landrace coffee germplasm was not properly characterized previously. The study aimed to characterize 64 Amaro Kelo local coffee accessions to understand the potential of the accessions for utilization in future coffee genetic improvement efforts. The experiment was laid out in an 8 x 8 simple lattice design with two replications at Awada Agricultural Research Sub-Center. Data were collected on 19 quantitative and 10 qualitative traits, and subjected to multivariate analyses, i.e. cluster and principal component analyses. The cluster analysis identified five clusters based on the quantitative characters, and the distances between most of the clusters were highly significant at P < 0.01. Principal component analysis revealed the first six principal components with Eigenvalues greater than one accounted for 77.7% of the total variation. The first two principal components with respective contributions of 23.32 and 18.85% cumulatively accounted for 42.2% of the total variation in the accessions. In addition, high values of Shannon-diversity index were found for the qualitative traits: branching habit, growth habit, fruit shape, overall appearance and stem habit. In general, the multivariate analyses confirmed the presence of high variation among the studied Amaro-Kelo coffee accessions that might serve as an important genetic resource for future coffee genetic improvement or conservation efforts.