Multivariate Analysis of Genetic Divergence in Amaranthus hybridus L.

Abstract

Evaluation of genetic divergence among species of crop is crucial for selection process in plant breeding and for developing new and enhanced varieties with desirable characteristics. This research was done to study the genetic divergence in 10 accessions of Amaranthus hybridus so as to determine highly genetically divergent parents for high yielding hybrid. Ten accessions of Amaranthus hybridus were planted in plastic buckets with three replications. Data were recorded on nine quantitative traits and analyzed using principal component analysis and Mahanalobis D2 statistics, within and between cluster distances were calculated following the formular by Singh and Chaudhary. The analysis of variance indicated highly significant (P ˂ 0.01) variability among the 10 accessions of Amaranthus hybridus for the characters evaluated. The principal component analysis recorded 86.21% of the total variation among the 10 Amaranth accessions. The intra-cluster distances were zero in all the clusters which showed that there was no difference among the accessions within the clusters. The maximum inter-cluster distance of 97.95 was observed among accessions of clusters II and IV while minimum inter-cluster (32.05) was found between clusters III and IV. The accessions of cluster III had the highest desirable cluster mean for plant height, number of leaves and number of nodes. The accessions of cluster IV had the longest leaf length, petiole length, inflorescent height and number of seeds. Selection of accessions from divergent clusters and using them in hybridization programme could produce desirable hybrids and may lead to improvement of Amaranthus hybridus for yield and quality traits.