Characterization of Little Millet (Panicum sumatrense) Genetic Diversity in Yelagiri Hills of Tamil Nadu

A local collection of 400 little millet accessions of traditional cultivars from villages of Yelagiri hills of Tamil Nadu were characterized for ten morphological characters by principal component analysis for determining pattern of genetic diversity and relationship among individuals. The largest variation was observed for the number of productive tillers per plant with coefficient of variation of 37.33%. The least variation was observed in days to maturity with coefficient of variation of 4.5%. A cumulative variation of 69.10% among ten characters was explained by first three axes. Correlation analysis revealed that straw yield, plant height, number of productive tillers, flag leaf sheath length, flag leaf length and panicle length, had highly significant and positive association with seed yield per plant and also exhibited significant positive inter correlation among themselves.