Genetic distance among mungbean germplasm pertaining to grain yield and yield components

Abstract

Sixty greengram germplasm lines were subjected to multivariate analysis through Mahalanobis’ D2 statistics (Tocher’s method) and 60 genotypes were grouped into nine clusters. Cluster III was the largest with 19 genotypes, followed by cluster I having 17 genotypes, cluster II and VII with eight genotypes, cluster V having 5 genotypes and clusters IV, VI, VIII and IX were solitary clusters. The maximum inter-cluster distance was between cluster VIII and IV, followed by cluster VIII and V. It shows that there is wide genetic diversity between the clusters. On the basis of divergence between clusters, superior F1s or their transgressive segregants can be obtained by crossing between the genotypes belonging to cluster VIII and cluster IV and also between genotypes belonging to cluster VIII and cluster V which are having maximum inter cluster distance between them. Further such genotypes from above clusters which are having better per se are to be considered for hybridization programme.