Vol. 9, Special Issue 11, Part Q (2025)

Cotton (​Gossypium spp.) important fibre crop and one of the essentials of mankind after food and fuel and its being cultivated globally all around the world. Diploid cotton offer several advantages over the tetraploid cotton mainly in terms of being resistant to biotic and abiotic stress. One hundred fourty five advance breeding lines of diploid cotton (Gossypium herbaceum) and also six checks were estimated for different yield, yield attributes and fibre quality traits using augmented design. Principal component (PC) analysis showed first seven PCs having Eigen value >1 explaining 68.52% of the total variation with different yield, yield attributes and fibre quality traits. Advance breeding lines were gathered into eleven clusters based on diversity assessment. Cluster I revealed maximum contribution towards total genetic diversity. The distances among clusters were greater than the distances within clusters. Greater magnitude of intra clusters distance was recorded in cluster VII and highest inter clusters distance was reported between cluster III and cluster VII. On the basis of screenplot, biplot and cluster analysis traits like total number of cotton bolls per plant and boll weight had maximum contribution towards total genetic diversity. The breeding lines reported similar pattern of distinctness in scatter diagram and also in cluster analysis.