Central Tobacco Research Institute, Rajahmundry.
Twenty four promising varieties of flue-cured tobacco were studied for their genetic divergence by D2 statistics with a set of seven characters related to yield and quality of the leaf. The study revealed that genetic divergence has little relevance to geographical origin of the varieties. The maximum divergence was obserredfor quality of leaf, bright leaf and TBLE followed by number of leaves per kg. The varieties, MC 1 and Speight G33, when crossedwith McNair 14 and Jayasree are likely to yield segregants with high yield coupled with better quality in subsequent generations.
