Abstract:

This paper was conducted to evaluate the salt tolerance of pepper cultivars by multiple statistics analysis according to agronomic character indexes at seed germination and seedling stage. The twelve character indexes from different pepper cultivars, such as relative trend of germination, relative radicle length, relative germination index, salt injury index and relative plant height etc. showed significant difference by using multiple variance analysis. Factor analysis indicated the twelve character indexes could be synthesized into four main factors, keeping 95.35% of information of primitive variables. Based on the score vectors of the factors, ten cultivars were classified into three categories by using cluster analysis. Zhongjiao No.4, No.8, No.7 and No.12 were salt sensitive cultivars, whereas Zhongjiao No.5 and No.11 were moderately salt sensitive cultivars, but Zhongjiao No.6, No.13, No.16 and No.10 were salt tolerant cultivars. These results indicated the multiple statistics analysis could be used to early evaluate the salt tolerance of pepper cultivars by investigation of agronomic character indexes at seed germination and seedling stage.

Key words: pepper, salt tolerance, multiple statistics analysis