Vol. 7, Issue 3 (2019)

A field experiment was conducted with 30 genotypes to study the genetic divergence using Mahalanobis D2 statistics. The genotypes were grouped into seven clusters based on D2 values for 7 characteristics indicating the presence of large amount of diversity among the genotypes. Maximum number of genotypes were grouped in cluster I (12) followed by cluster III (9), cluster IV (3), cluster V & cluster II with 2 genotypes in each cluster, whereas cluster VI and VII are solitary with single genotype in each cluster. The intra cluster distance ranged from 0.00 to 52.45. The highest intra cluster distance was observed for cluster III (52.45) followed by cluster IV (37.70), cluster I (27.20), cluster V (24.68), cluster II (3.22), cluster VI and cluster VII (0.0). The inter cluster D2 values ranged from 17.11 to 200.17. The maximum inter cluster distance (200.17) was noticed between cluster VI and VII followed by cluster V and VI (167.08). Since the clusters VI and VII had a single genotype with maximum inter cluster distance indicated that the genotypes included in these clusters will give high heterotic response and better segregants