Genetic diversity assessment of taro germplasm in Tarai region of Uttarakhand

Taro (Colocasia esculenta (L.) is one of the important underground vegetable crops grown vegetatively in various parts of India as well as in Africa. But there are few standard cultivars available for commercial cultivation and local germplasms across various parts of the world have a lot of genetic variation. Therefore, forty five genotypes of taro were evaluated in Augemented Block Design with three checks accommodated in six blocks during March to October 2014 at the Vegetable Research Centre, GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand to assess the genetic diversity using principal component analysis and cluster analysis. Approximately 78.216% of variation was recorded due to first seven principal components on various genotypes. The genotypes were further subjected to Hierarchical cluster analysis that resulted into seven non-overlapping clusters. The maximum number of genotypes was included in cluster III. Cluster V was recorded to have highest mean for maximum traits under study. Therefore PA-41, PA-4 and PA-23 are used for developing high yielding taro varieties.