Vol. 11, Issue 2 (2022)

Author(s):
Y Pushpa Reni, MV Ramana, A Prasanna Rajesh, G Bindhu Madhavi and K Kiran Prakash

Abstract:
A total of 59 genotypes of black gram were evaluated for fourteen characters at RARS. Lam, Guntur during kharif 2019 to assess the genetic diversity using both Mahalanobis’ D2 statistics (Tocher’s method) and Wards’ minimum variance method. The fifty nine genotypes grouped into seven clusters in Tocher’s method and four clusters in Wards’ method. The highest inter-cluster distance (1396.70) was observed between cluster-V and cluster-VI. The highest intra-cluster distance was observed in cluster- II (142.28). A high mean grain yield was observed in cluster-V (14.40 g), Days to maturity (80.50 days), plant height (41.30 cm), Number of branches per plant (3.60), Number of clusters per plant (13.50), Number of pods per plant (16.20), Number of seeds per pod (6.70), hundred seed weight (5.16 g), harvest index (42.15%) and iron content (7.50 mg/100g) have highest contribution to the total divergence in Tocher’s method. The crosses between genotypes of the divergent clusters VI and V would manifest wide variability in subsequent generations. Whereas in Ward’s method, the cluster I is the largest with 24 genotypes followed by, cluster II (20 genotypes), III (13 genotypes), and IV (2 genotypes). The highest Inter-cluster distance (26.356) was observed between cluster-III and cluster-IV. In both the methods, there is wide genetic diversity between the clusters. Genotypes of cluster-V and cluster-VI in Tocher’s method and the genotypes of cluster-III and cluster-IV of Wards’ minimum variance method are having the chance of producing transgressive segregants.