Assessment of Genetic Diversity in RiceGenotypes (Oryzasativa L.)

Abstract

Present investigation was carried out among the thirty seven genotypes of rice to study the nature and magnitude of genetic divergence usingMahalanobis D2 statistic revealed considerable amount of genetic diversity was found among all the genotypes based on twelve important quantitative characters. All the genotypes were grouped into seven clusters with cluster VI containing the maximum of 9 genotypes followed by cluster III and IVeach containing 7 genotypes. This suggested that the genotypes grouped within a particular cluster are high or less genetically similar to each other.The maximum intra cluster distance exhibited for cluster V (96.944) while lowest intra cluster distance was recorded for cluster III (43.122). The maximum intra cluster distance was revealed between clusters V and V (277.703); whereas, minimum inter cluster distance was between clusters III and IV (94.944).Cluster VII showed the highest mean values for number of productive tillers per plant, panicle length, biological yield per plant and grain yield per plant. Hence on the basis of higher cluster mean for almost all important component characters, cluster VII has been isolated as most divergent cluster containing genotypes like NLR 40058, PAU 3832-79-4-3-1 and cluster V containing CRR 644-B-12-B, CR 2929-57-4-2-3 and CR 2995-1-2-3-1-1. Thus, crosses involving the parents from these clusters may exhibit high heterosis as well as grain yield. The characters like number of grains per panicle (37.99), grain yield per plant (g) (12.31) and 1000-grain weight with husk (12.31) wererecorded as high percentage to the genetic divergence could be play major role to select the elite genotypes among them and the selecting genotypes may be used in further breeding programme to develop new high yielding rice varieties to the farmers for commercial cultivation.