Genetic Divergence and Selection of Promising Types of Aonla (Emblica officinalis L.) from Seedling Population in Solan Area of Himachal Pradesh

To assess the nature and magnitude of genetic divergence in Emblica officinalis, a survey was conducted during 2000 in Arki area of Himachal Pradesh and non-hierarchical Euclidean cluster analysis was performed for 66 seedling trees taking 15 fruit characters of each tree. Coefficient of variability ranged from 3.57% for pulp percentage (volume basis) to 39.26% for pulp volume. All the genotypes got clustered into 14 clusters which revealed that their distribution is in more than one cluster showing, non-parallelism between geographic and genetic diversity. Number of trees were minimum (1) in cluster 7 and 14 and maximum (12) in cluster 13. Mean value of most of the fruits was higher in cluster 14. Intra-cluster distance varied from 0 (cluster 7 and 14) to 1.81 (cluster 3). Maximum inter-cluster distance of 13.00 was observed between cluster 1 and 14. Based on various important fruit characters, four promising seedling trees will be propagated vegetatively for further testing and release in the growing area.