Studies on Genetic Divergence among Greengram (Vigna radiata L.) Germplasm Accessions

The present study was conducted at the Agricultural Research Station, Madhira, Telangana, India during rabi (October–December), 2017–18 to evaluate 39 diverse greengram germplasm accessions. The experiment was laid out in RBD replicated twice for 8 quantitative traits to study the nature and magnitude of genetic diversity among the accessions by multivariate analysis such as cluster analysis with D² Statistics and principal component analysis. 3 principal components viz., PC I, PC II and PC III contributed about 85.45% of total variance for the genotypes studied. The genotypes were grouped into 8 distinct clusters of which cluster I is the largest with a maximum number (16) of genotypes followed by cluster II and cluster VI with 6 genotypes each. Genotypes IC-436735, IC-261261, WGG-42 representing mono genotypic cluster signifies presence of diversity for creating variability through hybridization. Highest intra cluster distance of 47.27 was recorded for cluster VI and highest inter-cluster distance of 252.46 was observed between cluster IV and VIII. Data on cluster means for various traits showed that the highest mean value for number of clustersplant^-1, number of pods plant^-1 and seed yield plant^-1 was recorded by cluster VII. Percent contribution revealed that plant height contributed the most (32.11%) followed by seed yield plant^-1 (21.86%) for total genetic divergence. The genotypes in the clusters with maximum inter cluster distance may be used as potential parents for developing high yielding greengram cultivars.