Author(s): DA Patel, Mahesh B Vaja, Rumit Patel and Priyanka Solanki

Abstract: Finger millet is one of the most important and nutritionally rich crop of India. The present investigation was carried out with 40 genotypes of finger millet in randomized complete block design with three replications at the Experimental Farm of Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Anand Agricultural University, Anand during Kharif 2020. The genetic divergence assessed by Mahalanobis D²-statistic, grouped 40 genotypes into 7 clusters. The maximum inter-cluster distance (D =770.59) was found between cluster III and V and minimum (226.07) between V and VII. The intra-cluster distance ranged from 126.59 (cluster-III) to 202.14 (cluster-V). In general, intra- cluster distance was lower than inter cluster distances, indicating that genotypes included within a cluster tended to diverse less from each other. The cluster V shows highest mean values followed by cluster-IV and cluster-VII for most of the desirable traits. Percent contribution of various traits towards total genetic divergence showed that protein content contributed maximum percentage (35.13%) towards total genetic divergence followed by Fe content (25.90%) and harvest index (11.79%). Looking to the high yielding genotypes and large inter-cluster distances, it is recommended to attempt crossing of the genotypes from cluster III (VL-149, VL-708) and cluster V (GPU- 66, MR-6), which may lead to produce broad spectrum of favourable genetic variability for yield improvement in finger millet.

DOI: 10.33545/26174693.2024.v8.i3k.881