Divergence studies in gladiolus

The present investigation was carried out with twenty eight genotypes of gladiolus (Gladiolus hybridus Hort.) which were evaluated to assess the genetic diversity during 2011–12 to 2013–14 for three years in a completely randomized block design with three replications. The mean performances (3 years) of gladiolus varaities was highly significant for all the twelve growth, flowering and corms traits studied indicating the presence of variability. The genotypes were grouped into 8 clusters. Among the 8 clusters, cluster-VIII was largest with twelve genotypes, followed by cluster-I having 4 genotypes. The remaining cluster had 2 genotypes each. The maximum intra-cluster distance was exhibited by genotypes of cluster VIII, while the lowest by the genotypes of cluster-II. The inter-cluster distance was highest between the cluster VI and VIII and lowest between cluster I and VI, and II and V. The different clusters have higher mean values for different traits, the genotypes ‘Smoky Lady ’from cluster-I, ‘Light Purple ’and ‘African Star ’from cluster VIII, ‘Hunting Song ’from cluster-III and ‘Bis-Bis ’from cluster-VI deserve to be considerably to divergence.