Electronic Journal of Plant Breeding (Mar 2021)
Genetic diversity in foxtail millet genotypes
Abstract
A total of 80 foxtail millet genotypes were evaluated for ten quantitative characters at MARS (Main Agricultural Research Station), UAS (University of Agricultural Sciences), Raichur during kharif 2018 to assess the genetic diversity using Mahalanobis D2 statistic. The eighty genotypes were grouped into twelve clusters. The highest inter-cluster distance (6623.62) was observed between cluster-VIII and cluster-XII. The highest intra-cluster distance was observed in cluster VII (529.01). A high mean grain yield was observed in cluster-XI (59.72g). Plant height (46.96%) and grain yield (46.39%) have the highest contribution to the total divergence. The crosses between genotypes of the divergent clusters VIII and XII would manifest wide variability.
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