Assessing Genetic Diversity for Yield and quality Traits in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Abstract

An experiment was conducted in Rabi 2017-18 at wheat research farm, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, Bhagalpur (Bihar) to study the nature and magnitude of genetic divergence in thirty-two genotypes of wheat used using Mahalanobis’s D2 statistics as per ward minimum variance method. All the genotypes were grouped into six clusters revealed the presence of a considerable amount of genetic diversity for different yield and yield attributing traits. The cluster I consisted the maximum sixteen genotypes followed by seven genotypes in cluster IV and 3 genotypes each in cluster V and VI, 2 genotypes in cluster III and mono-genotype in cluster II. The highest intra-cluster distance was exhibited by cluster V (98.83) followed by cluster II (87.93), and III (87.86). The highest inter-cluster distance was observed between cluster III and VI (336.51) followed by cluster V and VI (293.99) and cluster II and III (269.15). The above results indicate that these genotypes have maximum genetic diversity and useful for developing a large number of transgressive segregants through crossing programme by using maximum diverse genotypes. Noteworthy is that cluster III exhibited the highest mean values for grain yield per plant, 1000- grain weight, grains per spike, biological yield and harvest index. The cluster VI exhibited the highest mean value for protein content and the lowest mean value for plant height, days to 50% flowering and maturity. The cluster II exhibited the highest mean value for spike length and grain weight while the cluster V exhibited highest mean value for Iron and zinc content. The promising genotypes for grain yield and its attributing traits were identified from cluster III and VI on the basis of mean values. Among the fourteen traits studied, maximum contribution was made by days to 50% flowering and iron content (20.36%) Therefore, these characters may be given importance during hybridisation programme.