Morphological and total protein variation assessment in redroot pigweed (Amaranthus retroflexus L.)

Amaranthus retroflexus, is an abnoxious weed and has cosmopolitan distribution. The species is a successful invader and seems to be adapted to a wide array of habitats. In the present study, morphological traits like of plant ‎height, inflorescence length, leaf ‎length, leaf ‎width, leaf ‎area, number ‎of ‎leaves and total ‎protein were assessed. Unweighted pair-group method of arithmetic averages method (UPGMA) were performed to determine the individual relationship among ecotypes. Four groups were classified based on the cluster analysis of ecotypes and factor analysis revealed that three factors comprise almost 78.25% of total variations that the proportion of the first and second components were 51.8 and 25.45, respectively. Leaf length and leaf width possessed the highest positive correlation with the first factor. Number of leaves and inflorescence length possessed the positive correlation with the second factor.