Department of Plant Breeding, Haryana Agricultural University, Hissar-125004, India
*Present address:—Haryana Agricultural University, Regional Research Station, Bawal—123 501 India.
Genetic divergence, as measured by Mahalanobis's D2 statistic, was studied in 28 hybrids of an 8 x 8 diallel set of wheat. All the hybrids got grouped into 9 clusters and cluster I had maximum number of hybrids in both the environments in F1 generation. Clustering pattern of the hybrids was swayed by their parentage. Environments exerted considerable influence in the grouping of the hybrids. Genetic diversity was found to be associated with heterosis and inbreeding depression. Cluster V in E I and cluster III in E2 were the most compact clusters. The inter-cluster distances of cluster IX from other clusters were highest in both the environments.
