Genetic Diversity for Yield and its Component Traits in Pearl Millet Germplasm

One hundred and five genotypes of pearl millet representing different countries were studied for genetic divergence analysis utilizing Mahalanobis D2 technique. The analysis of data revealed that significant difference was observed among the genotypes for all the traits. Based on the genetic distance (D2 value), the 105 accessions were grouped into 22 clusters. Of the 22 clusters formed, cluster II was the largest with 63 genotypes followed by cluster III with 10 accessions. Among the twelve characters studied, the most important character contributing to the divergence was days to maturity and the traits like productive tillers/plant, grain yield/ear, peduncle length, grain yield/plant and 1000-seed weight were next in the order. Cluster I and XVII had maximum inter cluster distance suggesting wide diversity and by utilizing these accessions from these clusters desirable segregants may be evolved through hybridization. Maximum diversity was observed between IP-9416 vs. ICTP-8203, IP-5275 vs. IP-14644, IP-8276 vs. IP-18742.