Assessment of genetic diversity in brinjal genotypes using multivariate analysis

Genetic divergence of germplasm was studied for 35 brinjal genotypes. The first principal component largely accounted for the variation among the brinjal genotypes (29.90%) followed by second principal component (20.35%) and third (20.08%). The first three principal components accounted (70.33%) of the total variation among eight characters describing 35 genotypes, while the first two accounted (50.25%). The traits which contributed more positively to PC1 were fruit weight, fruit width and yield per plant, while remaining traits in this PC1 did not contributed rather their effects were distributed among other PCs. The genotypes in the PC1 were more likely to be associated with higher fruit weight, fruit width and fruit yield whereas the genotypes with higher plant height, plant spread and number of primary branches were contributing to PC2. Based on the cluster means the important cluster was Cluster I for fruit weight, fruit length, fruit width and yield per plant. Cluster II for plant height, plant spread, and number of primary branches. Cluster III for number of fruit per plant. The maximum inter-cluster distances were recorded between the cluster I and II (278.26) followed by the distance between I and V (245.32) may be uses for hybridization. The lowest inter-cluster distance was observed between cluster II and V (35.26) followed by III and V (45.75) suggesting a close relationship among these three clusters.