Vol. 11, Special Issue 2 (2022)

Author(s):
Megha Raghavan, SR Singh, BN Hazarika, L Wangchu and Amit Kumar

Abstract:
Mandarins are highly preferred fruit crop in India where maximum genetic diversity is seen in Northeast part of the country. The present investigation was conducted during the year 2018-21 by collecting mandarin genotypes from different parts of Northeast India (Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and Sikkim) along with three wild species to evaluate the genetic diversity using morphological markers. On the basis of mean performance genotypes showed better results in the desirable traits chosen such as maximum fruit weight in G31, G6, G34, G23,G4,G40, G9 while minimum seeds per fruit in G16, G38, G1, G29, G38. Maximum number of genotypes were found in cluster 2 and least number of genotypes are found in cluster 5, cluster 9 and cluster 10 by cluster analysis. From the cluster mean analysis of different parameters of genotypes cluster 4 was found to be promising with maximum number of seeds, titratable acidity, shelf life but minimum of yield, number of fruits, pH, vitamin C, total sugar, fruit length and fruit weight while cluster 10 provides maximum yield number of fruits, vitamin C, total sugar, TSS and minimum seed weight and titratable acidity. The highest (2766.74) inter-cluster distance was recorded between cluster 4 and cluster 10 and least (24.48) inter-cluster distance was recorded between cluster 8 and cluster 5. Genetic diversity revealed that characters like number of fruits and vitamin C (mg/100g) imparted maximum percent with respect to genetic divergence (11%). From these results obtained it can be concluded that mandarin found in North East India are morphologically diverse and could be utilized for future crop improvement.