Vol. 10, Issue 9 (2021)

Author(s):
Maram Akash Reddy and Gaibriyal M Lal

Abstract:
Thirty-five chickpea genotypes were tested with an objective to estimate the magnitude of genetic diversity present among them using Mahalanobis D² statistics. The experiment was conducted during Rabi 2020-21 at Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Sam Higginbottom University of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences. The magnitude of genetic diversity was studied using data from 13 quantitative traits. Analysis of Variance confirmed the presence of significant variation among the genotypes. The 35 genotypes were divided into seven clusters based on their D² values. Out of seven clusters, cluster Ⅰ was the largest with 19 genotypes followed by cluster Ⅱ with 10 genotypes and cluster Ⅳ containing two genotypes. The clusters Ⅲ, Ⅴ, Ⅵ and Ⅶ are mono-genotypic with one genotype each. Highest intra cluster distance was observed in cluster Ⅰ (54.37) which has maximum number of genotypes followed by cluster Ⅱ (52.47) and cluster Ⅳ (26.49). Maximal inter-cluster distance was observed between clusters Ⅱ and Ⅵ (180.36) followed by clusters Ⅳ and Ⅶ (146.15). The genotypes under clusters Ⅱ and Ⅵ, clusters Ⅳ and Ⅶ can be used as parents in future hybridization programmes and the offspring produced is highly heterotic and contains high variability.