A study on genetic diversity among okra varieties

Fifty three germplasm lines of okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L. Moench) representing different regions were evaluated to assess the extent of genetic diversity employing Mahalanobis D² statistics. The genotypes were classified into 11 discrete clusters and the entire collection was allocated to different clusters. No parallelism between genetic and geographic divergence was observed. Substantial variation in cluster means was observed for all characters studied. Considering extent of diversity among genotypes and cluster means for various characters, crosses among genotypes of clusters XI, X, VI, VII and I may give rise to heterotic hybrids and wide spectrum of variability in subsequent segregating generations. Genotypes POS-16, JOL-2K-19, POS-8, VRO-22, VRO-10, POS-18, POS-27, Hisar Unnat and Punjab-8 were observed to be potential parents for future okra breeding programmes.