Study of genetic divergence using mahalanobis D square analysis in brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) genotypes Tabasum Saima, Nazir Gazala*, Hussain Khursheed, Masoodi Ummyiah H., Berjes Syed, Manzoor Nida Division of Vegetable Science, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Shalimar, Srinagar, Kashmir- 190 025 *e-mail: gazalanazir6@gmail.com
Online Published on 28 December, 2023. Abstract Forty diverse genotypes of brinjal were evaluated for 19 different quantitative and qualitative traits in the experimental field of Division of Vegetable Science, FOH, SKUAST, Kashmir Shalimar during kharif season 2021. The genotypes were grouped into seven diverse clusters on the basis of D2 statistics. Cluster VI accommodated maximum number of genotypes (9), followed by cluster V and VII (6), cluster III and IV (5), cluster I (4) and cluster II (3). Cluster V had maximum intra cluster distance (40242.92), followed by cluster III (29117.82) and cluster II (22985.97), suggesting considerable genetic divergence among the genotypes of the respective clusters and the genotypes from within the clusters can be chosen as parents for heterotic groupings or mating design based testing. . The inter-cluster distance depicts greater divergence among the clusters and maximum inter-cluster was recorded between cluster II and cluster VI (280335.30) followed by cluster IV and cluster V (252012.10) and cluster I and cluster II (219988.30), suggesting greater diversity between genotypes belonging to respective pairs of clusters. For cluster mean values, the genotypes in cluster IV were having highest values for days to 1st flowering (48.35), days to first fruit set (57.25), number of branches per plant (13.17), phenol content (111.27) and total sugars (2.76). Fruit yield per hectare contributed maximum towards total genetic diversity (50.21), followed by average fruit weight (32.82) and number of fruits per plant (11.41). Rest of the parameters contributed lesser towards total genetic diversity. Top Keywords Brinjal, Cluster analysis, Clustering, D2 statistics, Diversity, Percentage contribution. Top |