Assessment of genetic diversity for yield, yield attributes and water use efficiency related traits in groundnut [Arachis hypogaea L.]

To establish the degree of genetic diversity for 14 quantitative parameters, 36 groundnut genotypes were investigated using the Mahalanobis D² Statistics. Tocher’s method separated the entire genetic resource set into nine distinct, non-overlapping clusters demonstrating the presence of significant amount of genetic diversity. Cluster I had the maximum number of accessions (15), followed by cluster IV with 7 accessions, cluster VI with 5 genotypes, cluster V with 3 genotypes and cluster VII with 2 genotypes. The clusters II, III, VIII and IX were monogenotypic. The inter-cluster distance was maximum between the clusters VI and IX. Shelling percent contributed maximum to the genetic divergence followed by pod yield plant^-1. Hence due emphasis should be given to these traits as improvement of these characters would result in increase in pod yield plant^-1.