Genetic divergence in Chrysanthemum (Dendranthema x grandiflora Tzvelev) based on morphological traits

Abstract

Genetic diversity of thirty-one genotypes of Chrysanthemum were analysed for various growth and flowering related traits. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences among the genotypes for all the morphological traits studied. The clustering pattern based on Mahalanobis D2 statistics categorised genotypes into six distinct clusters. The largest cluster i.e. cluster III composed of eleven genotypes followed by cluster II with nine genotypes, cluster I having eight genotypes and cluster IV, V, and VI with one genotype each. The maximum inter-cluster distance was recorded between clusters IV and cluster V (376.87) followed by clusters IV and cluster VI (344.96) and, cluster II and cluster IV (196.81). The maximum intra-cluster distance was observed for cluster III (56.57), followed by cluster II (46.87) and cluster I (29.52). Among all the clusters, genotypes in cluster II recorded highest cluster mean values for number of branches per plant (7.15), number of leaves (119.72) and flowers (91.69) per plant. Among nine characters, number of flowers per plant contributed maximum to divergence (32.26%). Therefore, for chrysanthemum improvement, highly diverse genotypes can be used as parents for crossing to generate high variability.

Keywords

• Chrysanthemum
• genetic diversity
• Mahalanobis D2 statistics
• morphological traits