The morphological variation of 81 garden
cress including 77 accessions of Genebank Department
of Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop
Plant Research in Gatersleben, Germany and four
ancient varieties collected from different geographical
and bioclimatic areas of Iran were assessed based on
19 morphological traits. The genotypes were grown
according to simple lattice design with four replications
across 2 years (2012 and 2013). Significant
differences among accessions were revealed for the
majority of traits. The coefficient of variation varied
from 18.05 (number of seeds per silique of lateral
branches) to 52.79 %(biological yield) in the first year
and varied from 9.12 (number of seeds of silique per
plant) to 36.05 %(biological yield) in the second year.
The first four factors explained 83.92 % of the total
variation at year 2012 while the first four factors
explained 76.93 % of the total variation at year 2013
among 81 of garden cress accessions. At both years,
days to flowering, days to maturing, height of first
branch and height of first silique, number of silique per
lateral branches and number of siliques per plant were
the most important traits contributing to the first two
factors. This indicates that breeding programs should
be based on these traits for improvement of garden
cress. The regions of origin of the accessions were
dispersed in ten sub-units which the first factor axis
was much more important than the second one in
separating the regions of origin of the accessions and
separated sub-units five from four other sub-units, but
this factor axis could not separate accessions of subunit
I. Based on the observed structures of variation, it
is concluded that the magnitude of morphological
variation in the material studied is high and the
implications of the results for plant breeding programs
are discussed. The results of the present study can be
used for breeding and improvement of garden cress for
various desired traits through hybridization i