Genetic divergence in maize (<em>Zea mays</em> L.) inbred lines

Abstract

Investigation was carried out to determine the genetic divergence in the 30 maize inbred lines using Mahalanobis D2 statistic. Analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among all the inbreds. Inbreds were grouped into seven clusters, indicating the presence of genetic diversity. Cluster IV was the largest having (10) genotypes followed by cluster III having (8) genotypes and cluster I having (6) genotypes. Cluster IV had the highest intra-cluster distance (385.52). The inter-cluster distance was found to be highest between Cluster VI and Cluster VII (4534.03) suggested more variability in genetic makeup of the genotypes included in these clusters and thus inbred lines from cluster VI and VII should be selected as parents in hybridization programme for yield improvement in maize inbred lines. Out of 12 characters studied, plant height and 100 seed weight contributed high for genetic divergence.