Diversity among genotypes of conilon coffee selected in Espírito Santo State.

The use of multivariate techniques for factor analysis is an efficient alternative for coffee breeding programs. This study aimed to evaluate the genetic diversity of 60 genotypes of conilon coffee based on agronomic performance in the northern state of Espírito Santo and to estimate the relative contribution of different agronomic characteristics towards the diversity of the species. The data were collected in an experiment conducted on the Experimental Farm of Bananal do Norte (Instituto Capixaba de Pesquisa, Assistência Técnica e Extenção Rural ? INCAPER) in the southern state of Espírito Santo, and 12 agronomic characteristics were evaluated over four sequential harvests (4 years). Significant differences between the genotypes were observed for all of the characteristics, indicating the possibility of exploiting the high genetic variability to classify the genotypes into different groups based on their similarities. Of the agronomic characteristics, the duration of the ripening cycle was the variable that contributed the most to the variability among the 60 genotypes, with a relative contribution of 70.02%.