Study of the variability in a germplasm collection of castor

Abstract

The castorbean oil is used in hundreds of industrial applications and the interest in this oilseed crop has increased in recent years due to the european research policy In this work, we studied the variability present in a germplasm collection of nine accessions grown at Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Agroalimentario in Murcia. Significant differences were found in earliness, plant height, 1.000 seed weight, yield, spininess and dehiscence of capsules, colour and bloom of stems, seed mottling etc. Principal components and cluster analyses were used to study the variation and for genotype grouping. In this collection, several genes of agronomic interest are present: indehiscence, spineless capsules, dwarfism, earliness, bloominess, and other morphological variants together with genotypes of bigger seeds and high yield. On the other hand, castor has shown a good adaptation to be grown in spring with irrigation at southeast Spain.