Genetic divergence of saffron germplasm for morphological and corm attributes

Fifty diverse genotypes of saffron (Crocus sativus L.) were evaluated for genetic divergence with respect to morphological and corm attributes at Saffron Research Station Pampore, SKUAST-K during rabi 2017-18. Ten randomly and tagged competitive plants were selected for the recording of observations for eighteen (18) morphological, floral and corm traits. All the genotypes were grouped into eleven clusters with the highest number of genotypes (28) in cluster I, followed by cluster II with 7 genotypes and cluster IV with 5 genotypes based on divergence analysis. The percentage contribution towards total divergence by various characters indicated that fresh pistil weight contributes 21% followed by multiplication index (18%), total flower weight, corm-1 (13.52%) and the number of leaves corm-1 line-1 (13.27%) and big corm index (5%), respectively. High cluster mean for floral attributes was observed to be on account of the grouping of genotype SSR/SD-30, SSR/SD-6, SSR/SD-15, SSR/SD-29, SSR/SD-2, SSR/SD-1, and SSR/SD-24 for yield attributes which provides sufficient scope for saffron crop improvement through clonal selection.