Electronic Journal of Plant Breeding (Jun 2019)

Genetic divergence analysis of castor (Ricinus communis L)

  • S. Nagarajan,
  • PL. Viswanathan,
  • S.R. Venkatachalam,
  • S. Manickam and,
  • N. Ganapathi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.5958/0975-928X.2019.00099.1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 2
pp. 754 – 760

Abstract

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Castor is an important non edible oil seed crop cultivated throughout the world in varied climatic situation, due to its wider adaptability. Genetic diversity plays a foremost role in developing a potent genotype. Hence the present study was attempted to group 68 castor genotypes into different clusters based on Mahalanobis D2 statistics. Based on genetic distance, 68 castor genotypes were grouped into 14 clusters. Among the 11 biometrical characters studied, seed yield per plant has contributed more to the total divergence. The maximum intra cluster distance was observed in cluster XIV and minimal intra cluster distance was recorded in cluster II. Similarly maximum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster XIII and cluster XIV. The minimal inter cluster distance was observed between cluster III and cluster V. Thus the selection of genotypes from these diverse clusters will help us to arrive at potent segregants in future hybridization programme.

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