Interspecific classification m Dioscorea germplasm was made aiming to characterize them by morphological descriptors and classify by principal component analysis. Eleven accesses belonging to Universidade Federal Rural de Pernambuco Brasil (UFRPE Germplasm Collection) were studied. Fourteen descriptors were chosen for each access: leaf color and shape, petiole pigment, stem color and shape, presence and color of membranes, presence of good, presence of aerial tubers, tuber shape, presence of roots m lhe tuber, pigment in lhe tuber and leaf length and width. It was observed that leaf length and width provided high contribution on lhe access discriminations. The accumulated variance to the 1st and 2nd principal components were 89% of the whole variation. Six groups were made up representing Dioscorea accesses.
yam; multivatiate analysis; descriptors
