GENETIC DIVERGENCE IN OAT (AVENA SATIVA L.)
PARBHAT KUMAR, D. S. PHOGAT AND AXAY BHUKER*
Forage Section, Department of Genetics & Plant Breeding
CCS Haryana Agricultural University,
Hisar-125004 (Haryana), India
*(e-mail : bhuker.axay@gmail.com)
(Received : 10 August 2016; Accepted : 15 September 2016)
SUMMARY
Genetic diversity among 50 genotypes was carried out using Mahalanobis D2 statistics for 16 characters. Based on the D2 values, all genotypes were grouped into seven clusters depending upon the similarity in the expression of their genetic divergence. Maximum number of genotypes were grouped in cluster VI (12) followed by cluster IV (11), I (9), II (8), III (4) and clusters V and VII had three genotypes each. The highest intra cluster D2 value was observed for cluster V (5.304) followed by cluster I (5.174), cluster III (5.054), cluster VI (4.771), cluster II (4.470), cluster VII (4.501) and cluster IV (4.104).The average inter cluster distance was found to be highest between cluster V and VII (8.558), cluster III and V (7.165), cluster III and VI (5.919) whereas the lower inter-cluster distance was observed between clusters II and IV (5.075), followed by clusters IV and VI (5.328). Out of 16 characters, contribution of seedling dry weight was maximum (39.76%), followed by seed yield/plant (13.71%), seed vigour index II (10.94%), axis length (8.41%) and germination% (7.43%), whereas the remaining characters like 100-seed weight (4.33%), seed vigour index I (2.78%), seedling length (2.61%), days to maturity (2.37%), days to 50% flowering (2.29%), number of tillers/plant (1.80%), flag leaf length (1.47%), inetrnode length (1.22%), number of spikelets/panicle (0.16%), peduncle length (0.65%) and plant height (0.08%) contributed very little for divergence.
Key words: Genetic divergence, oat, yield traits, genotypes