Genetic Divergence in Linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.). Germplasm

Abstract

Mahalanobis D2 statistic was used to study the genetic diversity between and within the forty genotypes of linseed (Linum usitatissimum L.). at experimental farm department of Genetics and Plant Breeding field at College of Agriculture, Latur (Maharashtra) during Rabi 2023-24 which were sown in RBD Design at 30 cm x 5 cm spacing. The observations were recorded on ten quantitative characters namely days to 50% flowering, days to maturity, plant height (cm), number of branches per plant, number of capsules per plant, number of seeds per capsule, 1000 seed weight (g), harvest index, oil content (%) and seed yield per plant. The data recorded on these characters was utilized for estimation of mean, variability, genetic advance, and genetic diversity by D2 method. Forty genotypes were grouped into four clusters using Tocher’s method. Cluster I had the highest number of genotypes (27) followed by cluster II (10), cluster IV (02) and cluster III included 1 genotype cluster. The intra cluster distance (D2) ranges from 10.86 to 12.89, whereas inter cluster distance D2 ranges from 14.70 to 22.36. The maximum inter cluster distance (D2 = 22.36) was observed between cluster I and cluster IV. All four clusters identified through divergence analysis comprised genotypes of diverse origins, suggesting a lack of parallelism between genetic diversity and geographical distribution. There is considerable potential for achieving improvement through hybridization and selection by making crosses between accessions belonging to different clusters.