Genetic Variability and Divergence Studies in Newly Developed Clones of Sugarcane Jaganur Suresh, Nagaraja T.E., Hiremath Guruprasad* Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, College of Agriculture, UAS, Dharwad-05, Karnataka *email: guruprasad4235@gmail.com
Online published on 15 December, 2016. Abstract Thirty two newly developed clones by AICRP (Sugarcane) at Zonal Agricultural Research Station, V.C. Farm, Mandya and three standard checks viz., Co VC 99463, Co 86032 and Co 62175 were tested in a randomized complete block design with two replicates to elucidating the information on variability and to quantify the genetic diversity among these clones regarding fourteen cane yield and quality characters. The analysis of variance indicated the presence of significant variability among the genotypes for all traits studied. NMC, cane yield and CCS yield exhibited moderate Genotypic and Phenotypic Coefficient of variance (GCV and PCV) coupled with high heritability and genetic advance indicating the role of additive genes for the expression of these traits, hence, phenotypic selection could be effective in improvement of these traits. The genotypes were grouped into eight clusters based on the genetic distance using Mahalanobis’ statistic. Higher inter cluster distance was noticed between cluster VII and VIII (25.62) indicating high divergence. Thus, exploitation of genotypes within these two clusters as parents for crossing could produce good segregants. The intra cluster distance within cluster II (4.64) and I (4.61) was very low indicating a close relationship of genotypes within each of these clusters. High cluster mean value for juice quality was recorded by cluster V whereas for cane and sugar yields, cluster VII was the best. It is suggested that genotypes within these two clusters could show greater potentiality for breeding purpose by virtue of their desirable characters. Top Keywords Genetic variability, Heritability, GCV, PCV Genetic advance and Diversity. Top |