International Journal of Horticulture, 2017, Vol.7, No. 4, 26-32
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Result of PCA indicated that first two components having Eigen value greater than one retained in the analysis
because of the substantial amount of variation amongst them. The two components had a variance of 42.07 and
30.62 percent aggregating to total of 72.69 percent of the total variation explained (Table 3).
Figure 1 Dendrogram showing clustering pattern of 14 edible flower crops based on six quality traits constructed using complete
linkage Euclidean distance method
Table 3 Eigen vectors for first three principle components of quantitatively measured traits in eight SI lines of cabbage
Traits
Principle Component*
PC
1
#
PC
2
CUPRAC
0.244
0.798
FRAP
0.564
0.707
Phenols
-0.390
0.456
Lycopene
0.959
0.061
Carotenoids
0.958
-0.218
β-Carotene
Eigen Value
0.399
2.52
-0.664
1.83
Percentage of variance
42.07
30.62
Cumulative % of variance
42.07
72.69
Note:
#
PC: Principal component;
*
Extracted through principle component analysis;
**
Bold value indicates the highest Eigen vector
for the corresponding trait amongst the three principal components
The first factor (PC1) had the highest positive values for lycopene (0.959), caroteniods (0.958) and β- carotene
(0.399) content; while the second factor was found superior for CUPRAC (0.798), FRAP (0.707) and Phenols
(0.456). The positive values of different traits in three components indicated its importance in divergence among
the 14 different species of edible flowers whereas, negative value showed the least contribution to divergence.
Further loading of different traits based on first two principle components indicated that CUPRAC, FRAP and
Lycopene are the main components of divergence among the 14 species of edible flowers, whereas, Phenols,
caroteniods and carotenes had lesser contributions, comparatively in the divergence. Banerjee et al. (2013) had
also applied the unweighted pair group clustering through dendrogram showing inter-relationships between food
flowers species and grouped them into two high level clusters based on activity.
4 Conclusions
The current study on the antioxidants ability and phytoconstituents of 14 species of edible flowers provided the
results supporting their usage as nutrient rich raw material. The results revealed the presence of antioxidants,
phenols and caroteniods in most of the flowers confirming flowers as a potential source of these phytonutrient.
However, there stand needs to assess their toxicological and pharmacological effects and establish their safety
limits. Furthermore, there are still lots of flowers which could be given consideration. The obtained results should
