Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU, Varanasi-221005, U.P.
Genetic divergence has been considered as an important factor in discriminating the genetically diverse parents for efficient and successful hybridization programme in order to get potential transgressive segregates. Multivariate analysis using Mahalanobis's D2 statistic has been found to be a potential biometrical tool in quantifying the degree of divergence in germplasms of crop plants. The present experiment for studies on genetic divergence was conducted with 50 genotypes of rice in Kharif-2015, at BHU, Varanasi. Using Tocher method, all 50 genotypes were grouped in to seven clusters. Out of which, cluster- III has maximum of 18 genotypes followed by cluster -I with 14 genotypes. Cluster-II, IV and VI consists of 7, 6 and 3 genotypes respectively. Cluster V and VII consists one genotype each. The intra-cluster distance was found maximum in cluster-VI (110.18) and minimum for cluster V (0.00) and VII (0.00). The inter-cluster distance was found minimum between cluster III and V (160.84). The inter-cluster distance was found maximum between cluster-I and VII (2819.53) which shows the maximum divergence between the genotypes present in those clusters. Hence, the crosses between the genotypes of cluster-I and VII may produce maximum transgressive segregants.
D2 statistic, Genetic divergence, intra-cluster distance, intercluster distance, transgressive segregates
