Analysis of genetic diversity of groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) genotypes collected from various parts of India

Abstract

During kharif, the genetic diversity among 144 genotypes for 13 characters was measured by employing D² statistic. The 144 groundnut genotypes were grouped under 16 clusters. Among 16 clusters, cluster IV was the largest which comprising of 24 genotypes fallowed by clusters I and II with 22 genotypes in each, cluster III and VII comprising 15 genotypes, cluster IV (14), VI (12), VII (7) and X (6) genotypes. The rest of clusters had shown solitary in nature. The average D2 values of inter cluster distances, showed maximum distance between Cluster-XI and XVI (241.24) followed by inter cluster distance (223.43) between IV and XVI. It indicates that crossing between these clusters helps in production of transgressive segregates or better recombinants. The clusters were ranked based on the overall score across 13 traits. Accordingly, cluster-V was superior which indicates the presence of most promising genotypes in them. Each character had their own contribution to total divergence where, the haulm yield and oil percentage had maximum contribution of 33.39% and 30.99% respectively to the divergence of genotypes.