Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Ch. Charan Singh University, Meerut-25005
The experimental material comprised 140 diverse genotypes of finger millet (Eleusine coracana L. Gaertn.). The data on 10 quantitative traits viz. days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height, number of tillers/plant, productive tillers/plant, number of fingers/ear, total fingers/plant, biological yield, grain yield and harvest index were collected from a random sample of 10 plants for each genotype. On the basis of non-hierarchical Euclidean cluster analysis, all the 140 genotypes of the present study were grouped into ten non-overlapping clusters. Maximum no. of genotypes (31) were included in cluster I followed by 28 genotypes in cluster V, 19 genotypes in cluster III, 14 genotypes each in clusters II and VIII, 11 genotypes in cluster VII, 10 genotypes in cluster IV, 7 genotypes in cluster VI, 5 genotypes in cluster IX, while there was only one genotype in cluster X. The inter-cluster distance varied from 16.85 between clusters X and I to 1.94 between clusters III and VIII. Genetic diversity was observed to be independent of the geographical origin of the genotypes.
Finger millet, genetic divergence, cluster analysis, diversity
