Vol. 9, Issue 1, Part F (2025)

Groundnut is currently a major industrial oilseed crop with good commercial significance. 20 advanced Groundnut lines were planted in Randomized Complete Block Design along with parental lines and two checks and they were evaluated for 13 traits. The analysis of variance showed significant differences among all the traits studied. The genotypes were grouped into five clusters. Among the clusters, cluster I had 14 lines (PP-19, PP-12, PP-6, PP-13, PP-14, PP-11, PP-18, PP-20, PP-17, PP-5, PP-8, PP-10, PP-9, PP-4) followed by cluster II had one line (PP-2), cluster III had one line (PP-16) and cluster IV had one lines (PP-1) and cluster V had three lines (PP-7, PP-15, PP-3). Clusters II and V had the long stand best inter-cluster distance (635.60), followed by clusters II and III (367.54), clusters IV and V (304.12), clusters I and V (302.11) and clusters I and III (235.79) indicating that these cluster pairs were most divergent. The relative contribution of individual character towards the divergence revealed that Protein content (5098.81%), was the highest contributor to the total genetic divergence followed by Oil content (2055.34%) (7.35%) and pod yield per plant (1976.28%). Thus, on the basis of inter-cluster distance, cluster means, characters with high contribution to D² values and by comparing the mean values of the all the genotypes, this study revealed that the genotypes, belong to the cluster II, V and III will be used for further breeding programme. In the present study, four lines viz., PP-1, PP-2, PP-5 and PP-14 developed through marker assisted backcross breeding programme showed resistance to late leaf spot, improved oil quality features like high oil and oleic acid content and were also superior or equivalent in yield compared with the recurrent parent, K6, further forward to yield evaluation trails and promising lines with LLS resistance and high yield will be released as superior variety/varieties.