Electronic Journal of Plant Breeding

Mahalanobis D² statistics was applied to assess the divergence among the 50 local collections and 4 popular cultivars of rabi sorghum. The analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the genotypes for all the traits studied. The 54 genotypes were grouped into 8 clusters where, cluster I was largest containing 15 genotypes followed by cluster V with 10 genotypes, cluster IV with 9 genotypes. The inter cluster distance was maximum between cluster VII and VIII followed by cluster III and VII and cluster V and VIII. Based on the inter cluster distance and the per se performance, the genotype RSV 1037 in the cluster VIII can be utilized in further breeding programme as a parent. Seed yield contributed maximum to divergence (94.2%), plant height (3.49%) and days to 50% flowering (2.10%).