Vol. 12, Issue 11 (2023)

Author(s):
Santoshkumar Magadum, Pankaj Kumar, Anupama Singh and SK Verma

Abstract:
The nature and extent of genetic diversity were assessed among 75 elite genotypes of pigeonpea using Mahalanobis D2 statistics. Based on the genetic distance, all the 75 genotypes were grouped into 10 different clusters. Cluster I was the largest with 45 genotypes followed by cluster II with 19 genotypes and cluster VI with 4 genotypes. The maximum inter cluster distance was recorded between clusters IX and X followed by clusters VII and IX and clusters V and IX. The minimum inter cluster distance was noticed between clusters IV and V. The maximum intra-cluster distance was recorded by cluster I followed by cluster VI and cluster II. The crossing between entries belonging to cluster pairs having large inter-cluster distance and possessing high cluster means for one or other characters to be improved may be recommended for isolating desirable recombinants in the segregating generations in pigeonpea. The characters viz., days to maturity, seed yield plant-1, number of pods plant-1, days to 50% flowering and 100-seed weight. Hence, these characters could be given due importance for selection of genotypes for further improvement.