Electronic Journal of Plant Breeding (Jul 2010)
Hierarchical cluster analysis of genetic diversity in Maize germplasm
Abstract
An experiment was conducted to analyze the genetic diversity among 38 maize germplasm accessions of the maizegermplasm bank of Department of Millets, TNAU, Coimbatore. Observations regarding 25 morphological traits wererecorded and the data matrix was used for estimation of Euclidian distance by Un-weighted Paired Group ArithmeticAverage (UPGMA) method. Clustering was done by Sequential Agglomerative Hierarchical Non-overlapping (SAHN)clustering. The genotypes were grouped in to four clusters. The grouping of the genotypes was not influenced by theirgeographical origin. Maximum dissimilarity was observed between the genotypes UMI 551 and UMI 696. Widely divergentclusters and genotypes were identified which could be further evaluated for their breeding value as parents and could beexploited in maize crop improvement.
