Morphological taxonomy of Musa genotypes in Taiwan

This paper presents the morphological classification of 19 Musa species and cultivars. Fifteen morphological characters for Musa acuminata and M. balbisiana and 50 morphological characters adapted from International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plant (UPOV) codes were employed to elucidate the phylogenetic relationship between both banana species. Analyses of genetic similarity based on all of these morphological characters suggested that bananas with A-genomes were in the same cluster. Moreover, a genetic similarity coefficient of 0.36 was obtained between M. acuminata and M. balbisiana in the analysis with the 15 morphological characters for both species, and 0.47 in the analysis with 50 UPOV-based morphological characters. Moreover, principal component analysis (PCA) of the 15 morphological characters suggested that PCI and PC2 together explained 78.6% of the total variance. A PCA with 50 UPOV-based morphological characters indicated that PCI explained 80.6% of the total variance, for which the main variables were pseudostem length, leaf blade length, and peduncle length. PCA of the 15 morphological characters showed that 'Pei Chiao', 'Giant Cavendish', and 'Dwarf Cavendish' were proximal in the PCA scatterplot. Notably, the PCA of 50 UPOV-based morphological characters indicated that 'Pei Chiao' and 'Giant Cavendish' were near each other in the PCA scatterplot, suggesting that they are phylogenetically related. The PCA of M. itinerans var.formosana with 15 morphological descriptors showed that this variant is phylogenetically distant from M. acuminata and M. balbisiana accessions. In summary, the findings may contribute to the classification and breeding of banana germplasm.