Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad-580 005, Karnataka, India.
Online published on 22 September, 2017.
Eighty safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) accessions along with five check varieties from Agricultural Research Station, Annigeri were evaluated to study the diversity pattern among the genotypes. The germpasm accessions were grouped into fifteen clusters. The distribution pattern indicated that the maximum number of germplasm (31) were grouped into c1uster-l followed by 16 in cluster-lI. The inter cluster distance in most of the cases was higher than the intra cluster distance indicating wide genetic diversity among the accessions of different groups. The highest inter cluster distance was observed between cluster V and cluster XV (90.22). The highest intra cluster distance was observed for the cluster II and lowest for the cluster I. The genotypes from clusters IX, V, XI could be used as potential donors for improving the yield in safflower in future breeding programmes. The germplasm of clusters which secured overall high resulting high ranking across 12 characters viz. A-2 (cluster XIV), AKA-98- 4 (cluster XI), PI254976 (VI), HUS-305 (cluster V) are considered most promising germplasm accessions and can be extensively used for the breeding programme to generate new material.
Safflower, Germplasm accessions, Genetic divergence, cluster analysis
