Genetic divergence in Virginia groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.)

Divergence analysis among sixty groundnut genotypes was carried out using Mahalanobis's D²-statistic. The genotypes were grouped into thirteen clusters. The maximum inter-cluster distance (D=36.51) was found between clusters III and V followed by clusters IV and V (D=32.67) and II and IV (D=24.21) indicated that these groups of genotypes were highly divergent from each other. The genotypes in above clusters revealed substantial difference in the means for important yield contributing characters suggesting that the genotypes belonging to these clusters from ideal parents for yield improvement in groundnut.