Assessment of genetic divergence using Mahalanobis D² and principal component analysis of qualitative and quantitative characters in pomegranate genotypes under sub-tropics

Studies were carried out to assess the genetic divergence among 30 pomegranate genotypes using Mahalanobis D² and Principal Component Analysis of 14 quantitative characters. Thirty genotypes were grouped into eight clusters. Maximum (10) genotypes were included in cluster I and minimum (1) in clusters VII and VIII. The maximum inter-cluster distance of 72.74 was observed among genotypes of the cluster V and VII and minimum (23.85) between the clusters III and IV; and II and VIII. The principal component analysis showed more than 82 per cent of the variability for qualitative and quantitative characters in different genotypes. The genotypes of cluster VIII was observed with highest character mean for number of hermaphrodite flowers (467), number of fruits per tree (84.2), juice per cent (67.3) followed by cluster V with the highest yielding (17.6 kg/tree) genotypes with fruit weight (262 g), aril weight (24.2 g), TSS (12.9%) and TSS: acid ratio (29.2). Fruit yield, fruit length, leaf length, TSS: acid ratio were observed significant variables components and the genotypes Ganesh, Mridula, Amlidana and P-26 were found with maximum values corresponding to these four variables. Selecting genotypes from divergent clusters and utilizing them in hybridization programme is likely to produce desirable recombinants, and may lead to improvement in pomegranate for yield and quality traits.