Linear discriminant analysis of structure within African eggplant 'Shum'

African eggplant ( Solanum aethiopicum ) lags behind in terms of research attention; leading to, among other gaps, scantiness of information on intra-group genetic diversity. Hierarchical clustering was applied to reveal structure in a pioneer 20-entry set of S. aethiopicum Shum group accessions at Africa Solanaceae Research Network secretariat in Uganda, using 61 morpho-agronomic variables collected from a complete randomised design (CRD) with 12 plants per accession in screen-house. A MANOVA preceded linear discriminant analysis, to model each of 61 variables, as predicted by clusters and experiment to filter out non-significant traits. Four distinct clusters emerged, with a cophenetic relation coefficient of 0.87 (P