Abstract
Several species of Trifolium are widely cultivated as forage for animals and green manure. This work aimed to characterize and estimate through morphological and agronomic traits the genetic diversity of natural populations of T. riograndense, an important forage legume from native pastures of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Plant height and diameter, number of primary and secondary stolons, stolon length, number of nodes per primary stolon, internode length, primary stolon diameter, leaf area, petiole length and dry matter production were analyzed in 29 accessions. The first five attributes and dry matter production were evaluated twice. A broad phenotypic variability was observed for almost all characteristics. Positive correlations occurred between petiole length and leaf area (r = 0.68), petiole length and plant height in the first evaluation (0.63), stolon length and plant height (0.58), total dry matter and plant diameter (0.61), and total dry matter and plant height in the second evaluation (0.55). The two most divergent accessions were collected in the same physiographic region and the two less divergent ones in different regions. A dissimilarity dendrogram separated four groups. Accessions collected in a region where T. riograndense is abundant were found to belong to different groups outlining the great variability of this native forage legume. Dry matter production in the first cut was the characteristic that most contributed (20.80%) to accessions divergence followed by number of secondary stolons (12.30%), leaf area (11.07%), and number of nodes per primary stolon (10.93%).
Highlights
The genus Trifolium L. (Leguminosae, Papilionoideae, Tribe Trifolieae) has its center of origin in the Mediterranean region with around 255 annual and perennial, autogamous and allogamous species, distributed in temperate and subtropical areas
Seeds from several populations of T. riograndense were collected in different areas of its natural distribution in Southern Braziland were kept as part of a germplasm collection
Leaf area ranged from 2.02 to 4.30 cm2 and the accessions could be classified by leaf size in three groups: “large leaves’, including accessions 17, 43, 46, 49, 50 and 71, “intermediate leaves”, with accessions 1, 15, 21, 23, 29, 33, 41, 42, 47, 59, 67 and 69, and “small leaves”, with accessions 3, 10, 11, 18, 19, 20, 30, 45, 53, 64, 66 and 72
Summary
The genus Trifolium L. (Leguminosae, Papilionoideae, Tribe Trifolieae) has its center of origin in the Mediterranean region with around 255 annual and perennial, autogamous and allogamous species, distributed in temperate and subtropical areas. (Leguminosae, Papilionoideae, Tribe Trifolieae) has its center of origin in the Mediterranean region with around 255 annual and perennial, autogamous and allogamous species, distributed in temperate and subtropical areas. Several of these species, such as T. repens L., T. pratense L., T. hybridum L. T. riograndense Burkart, popularly known as “trevo riograndense”, an important component of natural pastures of Southern Brazil, is a perennial, diploid (2n = 2x = 16) (Schifino, 1983; Schifino and Moraes-Fernandes, 1988), allogamous and versatile (may self-pollinate) species (Becker et al, 1987). Agric. (Piracicaba, Braz.), v.67, n.6, p.675-684, November/December 2010
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