Assessment of genetic diversity for yield, yield attributes and water use efficiency related traits in groundnut [Arachis hypogaea L.]

To establish the degree of genetic diversity for 14 quantitative parameters, 36 groundnut genotypes were investigated using the Mahalanobis D2 Statistics. Tocher’s method separated the entire genetic resource set into nine distinct, non-overlapping clusters demonstrating the presence of significant amount of genetic diversity. Cluster I had the maximum number of accessions (15), followed by cluster IV with 7 accessions, cluster VI with 5 genotypes, cluster V with 3 genotypes and cluster VII with 2 genotypes. The clusters II, III, VIII and IX were monogenotypic. The inter-cluster distance was maximum between the clusters VI and IX. Shelling percent contributed maximum to the genetic divergence followed by pod yield plant-1. Hence due emphasis should be given to these traits as improvement of these characters would result in increase in pod yield plant-1.