Genetic divergence in radish (Raphanus sativus L.) grown under valley conditions of Garhwal Himalaya

During the present investigation, an attempt was made to analyze the relatedness and distance among 20 genotypes of radish (Raphanus sativus L.) using 19 quantitative and qualitaive traits. The experiment was conducted at Horticultural Research Centre, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar (Garhwal), Uttarakhand (India) during rabi season 2010 which was laid out in Randomized Block Design with three replications. The analysis of variance revealed highly significant differences among genotypes for almost all the traits. Based on this analysis using various quantitative and qualitative traits, all the genotypes were grouped into 4 different clusters i.e. Cluster I, II, III and IV. The maximum intra-cluster divergence was observed for cluster II and least for cluster III. As far as the inter cluster divergence is concerned cluster II and IV were highly divergent, and least inter cluster divergence was recorded for cluster I and III. The genotypes from these clusters may be used as potential donors for future hybridization programme for genetic improvement in radish.