Vol. 11, Issue 12 (2022)

The present investigation entitled “Divergence studies in linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.)” was conducted at Agriculture Botany field of College of Agriculture, Latur (Maharashtra) during Rabi 2021-2022. The experimental material constituted 31 genotypes which were sown in RBD Design at 30 cm x 5 cm spacing. The observations were recorded on ten quantitative characters namely days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height (cm), number of primary branches per plant, number of secondary branches per plant, number of capsules per plant, number of seeds per capsule, 1000 seed weight (g), oil content (%) and seed yield per plant. The data recorded on these characters was utilized for estimation of mean, variability genetic advance, and genetic diversity by D² method. Thirty-one genotypes were grouped into fourteen clusters by Tocher’s method. Cluster I was with the highest number of genotypes (13) followed by cluster VI (5), clusters II (02) and remaining 11 clusters include 1 genotype in each cluster. The intra cluster distance (D²) range from 5.89 to 10.69, whereas inter cluster distance D² ranges from 6.80 to 36.94. The maximum inter cluster distance (D² = 36.95) was observed between cluster II and cluster V, followed by cluster II and IX (D² =3.54), cluster I and cluster II (D² = 29), cluster II and cluster IV (D² = 28.10). The minimum inter cluster distance (D² = 6.80) was between clusters III and IV. All the fourteen clusters in divergence analysis contained genotypes of heterogeneous origin thereby indicating non-parallelism between genetic and geographic diversity. Therefore, crosses between members of cluster separated by high inter-cluster distance are likely to throw desirable segregates.