Large scale germplasm diversity study to identify the diverse trait-specificaccessions for obtaining high heterotic hybrids in sunflower

Abstract

The present study was conducted to assess the large scale diversity present among the 2146 sunflower germplasm accessions along with three checks and focuses on the identification of the diverse trait-specific working accessions for the development of the new inbreds which could be utilized in the development of the high heterotic hybrids in sunflower. The cluster means for eight characters of 2149 accessions were obtained, and a large range of mean values among the 14 clusters was recorded for different traits. For a given character based on cluster mean values, we can select highly divergent genotypes from the respective clusters for the development of new inbreds.