Principal component analysis of growth and physiological characteristics for Salix hybrids

Abstract

The paper deals with the usefulness of principal component analysis for determining the relative contribution of growth and physiological characteristics towards biomass in 16 Salix hybrid clones. Two out of 12 principal components were found to have eigen vector values greater than unity (Gutman's lower bound) which explained 75.886% of total variation of original variables and played main role in analysis. First principal component contributed 66.07% of total variation, whereas the second component accounted for 9.81% of the variation. In the first principal component, high loading was for plant height, number of leaves, photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance and total fresh weight (0.873). In second principal component, highest loading was for collar diameter. Thus, the principal component analysis has brought out some of the basic components associated with growth, biomass and physiological characters of Salix and could be considered as important tool in explanatory work for optimizing Salix productivity.