Genetic Divergence Analysis in Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.)

Genetic diversity among 31 genotypes of groundnut were estimated using Mahalanobis D² statistic for five agro-morphological characters. The analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the genotypes for all characters. Based on Tocher's method, 31 genotypes were grouped into seven clusters, where cluster I was the largest containing 11 genotypes followed by cluster II and III with 7 genotypes each. The inter-cluster distance was maximum between cluster I and cluster VI followed by cluster I and cluster V, cluster III and VI and cluster I and IV. Considering the cluster distances and cluster means the genotypes from cluster I, III, V and VI could be selected for hybridization programme.