Vol. 12, Issue 7 (2023)

Author(s):
Kamini, RK Yadav and Vivek Kumar Sandilya

Abstract:
The current study used 40 accessions of grain amaranth, including four check varieties, BGA-2, GA-2, BGA-7, and C.G. Rajgira 1, during rabi 2021–22 and 2022–23 at the experimental area of the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding at Research and Instructional Farm, IGKV, Raipur, Chhattisgarh. A quantitative assessment of genetic divergence for 15 characters using Mahalonobis D² statistics revealed the presence of considerable genetic diversity. The 40 accessions were grouped into 6 distinct non overlapping clusters with variable number of accessions. The clustering pattern revealed highest number of accessions 24 appeared in cluster-I followed by 8 accessions in cluster-II and 5 accessions in cluster-III. The intra and inter-cluster distances ranged from 0.00 (cluster-IV, V and VI) to 6251.57 (cluster-III) and 5938.46 (cluster-V) to 32862.0 (cluster-VI) respectively. Cluster- III showed the highest intra-cluster distance followed by cluster-II and cluster-I. The maximum inter cluster distance 32862.0 between cluster-VI and cluster-I was observed, indicating presence of high divergence among the accessions. The accessions in cluster-I IC-95302, IC-95333, IC-95308, IC-95299, IC-41768, IC-42427, IC-42281, IC-95321, IC-93962, SKGPA-174 IC-41769, IC-38501, IC-95593, IC-41766, IC-42008, IC-95291, IC-41765, IC-95288, IC-38542, IC-38483, IC-95580, IC-46789, SKGPA-177 and IC-95298 are desirable accessions for days to 50% flowering, days to 80% maturity, plant height, inflorescence length, grain weight/panicle, dry weight of plant and harvest index, cluster-II IC-37156, SKGPA-179, RMA-7 check, BGA-2 check, SKGPA-173, SKGPA-175, SKGPA-172 and SKGPA-178 are desirable accessions for leaf length, petiole length and 10ml vol. seed weight, cluster-IV IC-42265 accessions desirable for number of leaves/plant and lateral spikelets length and cluster-V SKGPA-176 are desirable accessions for number of inflorescence/plant. The accessions IC-42277, SKGPA-182, C.G. Rajgira 1 check, SKGPA-181 and GA-2 check from cluster-III are desirable for seed yield/plant. Therefore, it would be logical to incorporate accessions from these cluster in further breeding programme.