Variation analysis of fruit phenotypic traits of different provenances of ancient Cinnamomum camphora in Jiangxi Province of China

Exploring fruit phenotypic diversity of different provenances of ancient Cinnamomum camphora in Jiangxi Province of China, it will provide a theoretical basis for the collection, selection and improvement of germplasm resources. Taking the naturally distributed ancient Cinnamomum camphora in 45 counties of 11 cities in Jiangxi Province as the research object, nested ANOVA, Pearson correlation analysis, principal component analysis and other methods were used to statistically analyze 10 phenotypic traits such as fruit thousand-grain weight, fruit volume, fruit side diameter, fruit horizontal diameter, fruit vertical diameter, and peel thickness in different provenances. The resuit was as follows. (1) The fruit phenotypic traits of ancient Cinnamomum camphora in Jiangxi Province were rich in variation among and within provenances, and the variation among provenances was the main source of phenotypic variation. The mean value of phenotypic differentiation coefficient among provenances was 80.1%. The coefficients of variation of fruit phenotypic traits among different provenances was ranged from 2.64% to 25.45%, with the largest coefficient of variation for peel thickness. The mean value of coefficient of variation among provenances(9.65%) was larger than that within provenances(8.52%). (2) Significant or highly significant correlations were existed among the fruit phenotypic traits of ancient Cinnamomum camphora in Jiangxi Province. Fruit thousand-grain weight was significantly positively correlated with fruit volume, fruit side diameter, fruit horizontal diameter, fruit vertical diameter, peel thickness, fruit side diameter-fruit horizontal diameter ratio, fruit side diameter-fruit vertical diameter ratio, fruit horizontal diameter-fruit vertical diameter ratio (P<0.05), while fruit horizontal diameter and fruit vertical diameter were significantly negatively correlated with fruit thousand-grain weight to fruit volume ratio(P<0.05). (3) There was a significant correlation between fruit phenotypic traits of ancient Cinnamomum camphora and latitude, longitude and climate factors in Jiangxi Province. Among them, fruit thousand-grain weight and fruit volume were highly significant negatively correlated (P<0.01) with annual average sunshine duration and mean temperature in July, and highly significant positively correlated with mean temperature in January and mean altitude factor (P<0.01). (4) The cumulative variance contribution of the first three principal components in the principal component analysis reached 78.78%, and the fruit side diameter, fruit side diameter-fruit vertical diameter ratio, and fruit side diameter-fruit horizontal diameter ratio could comprehensively reflect the information and ranking of the 10 traits. (5) In the cluster analysis, it was divided into two groups A and B at the distance coefficient of 1.2, and further divided into different subgroups at the distance coefficient of 0.9. The fruit morphology indexes from subgroup B2 were bigger. In conclusion, fruit phenotypic traits of ancient Cinnamomum camphora in Jiangxi Province were rich in variation, and the variation of among provenances was more than within provenances. At the same time, there was a certain geographic variation pattern of the phenotypic traits of Cinnamomum camphora. The results would provide an important direction for the selection and breeding of excellent germplasm resources in Jiangxi Province, China.