Abstract

Though Ethiopia is a center of diversity coriander that cultivated for its income generation and local consumption, there is little information on its genetic variation. For a true assessment of the diversity of coriander, characterization and evaluation for its component traits should be considered essential. Twenty-five accessions of coriander were collected from potential growing areas of Arsi-Bale districts and evaluated for the variation of vegetative traits during 2012 at Sinana Agricultural Research Center in single plot of four rows. The result of the analysis revealed that there was a large variation among the accessions for most of the traits under study. The most variable was the number of basal leaf per plant ranging from 55 to 4 with a variance of 113.34 and a mean of 17.52. On the other hand, branching of the plant showed least variation ranging from 2 to 1 with a variance of 0.08. Next to the number of basal leaf, the accessions showed large variation with respect to the length of the longest basal leaf and the basal leaf with a range of 52 to 27 and 45.80 to 23.60 and a variance of 43.56 and 38.95 respectively. Foliation (9 to 1), habitus of the basal leaves (4 to 1), Blade Shape of Upper Stem Length (6 to 4), blade shape of the longest basal leaves (5 to 4) and Branching of the plant (2 to 1) showed a decreasing range of variation. The present study focused on the vegetative traits for the assessment of variation in coriander accessions. Including the generative traits in the characterization work is considered essential for assessment of the diversity of coriander.

Keywords: Coriander; Variation and vegetative traits; Genetic variation