Genetic diversity of Pilocarpus microphyllus accessions using leaf traits
Elisa Ferreira Moura, José Eduardo Brasil Pereira Pinto, João Bosco dos Santos, Osmar Alves Lameira, José Airton Rodrigues Nunes, and Daniel Furtado Ferreira
Jaborandi (Pilocarpus microphyllus) is a medicinal species that produces pilocarpine, which is used to treat glaucoma, to stimulate lacrimal and salivary glands and in hair treatments. The objective was to study the genetic variation in a jaborandi genebank of Embrapa Eastern Amazon through quantitative traits and multivariate approaches. Leaves of 152 individuals from 13 natural populations from the states of Maranhão and Pará plus a commercial one were collected in two seasons. Six leaf traits were evaluated. The univariate and multivariate analyses showed the existence of genetic differentiation among sample areas. In the dispersion graph the accessions did not group according to their sample area. The first two principal components explained 79.9% of the total variation and the six original traits were highly correlated with them, so no variable was discarded.