Genetic Diversity of Fig (Ficus carica L.) Based on Morphological Characters and Two-Way Hierarchical Cluster Analysis

There are many local fig accessions cultivated in the world. In Egypt, the accessions are dispersed from Sinai at the east to El-Saloom at the west and from Alexandria at the north to Aswan at the south. Hence, there is no breeding programs were carried out to characterize or improve the Hence, there is no breeding programs were carried out to characterise or improve the Egyptian fig. Twenty-one local cultivated fig (Ficus carrica L.) accessions were collected from different localities from Egypt and Libya country (e.g. 18 accessions from Egypt: Giza, Cairo, Alexandria Marsa-Matrooh governorate and three accessions from Libya. Eight morphological characteristics including leaf traits were used to characterise the fig accessions. Eight morphological traits such as leaf length and width, leaf neck length, leaf lobes, leaf edge, leaf texture, leaf top and color were determinate by the two-way hierarchical cluster analysis of the 21 fig accessions using JMP® 7.0 software. In the first way of hierarchical clustering, the fig accessions were distributed into two main groups. The first group includes five clusters separate under two clusters, in the second way of the clusters, the eight leaf morphological traits were distributed into two clusters. Thus, it could be concluded that there are a wide range of variability within the cultivated fig accessions under current study. This diversification could enrich the genetic base of this genus and required more studies to achieve the maximum usefulness from this diversification. Morphological results will be useful in characterizing and to create the first reference and catalogue of the fig accessions.