Studies on Genetic Diversity in Desi Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) using D2 Statistics

A trail was conducted during rabi 2020 to study genetic diversity among 36 favorable genotypes of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) with help of Mahalanobis D2 statistics. On the basis of D2 values, 36 genotypes were arranged into 5 clusters. The intra cluster distances were lower than inter-cluster distances, specifying that genotypes comprised within a cluster shows tendency to vary less apart from each other. Out of thirteen characteristics considered, secondary branches per plant, number of pods per plant, seed yield per plant, harvest index and plant height, contributed very much in relation to genetic divergence. Wide range of variability was noticed for quantitative traits. This suggested that the selection based on these characteristics would be valuable in improving the grain yield. Therefore, a direct selection based on seed yield and component traits may be practiced to choose superior genotypes which could be utilized in breeding program for the development of high yielding chickpea genotypes.