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The present investigation deals with the genetic divergence, correlation, and path coefficient study for the six characters among sixty-two accessions of Ammi visnaga L. grown during two consecutive years, 2018-2019 and 2019-2020, in India. Morphological variability was detected for stem and umbel color from center reddish to pink during vegetative growth. In this study, high genetic co-variance (GCV) and high heritability with maximum genetic advance (GA), and high mean percentage were noticed for biological yield and harvest index and seed yield. These auspicious traits would possibly be governed by additive gene effects, which could help select the best genotypes using an appropriate breeding strategy for crop improvement. The highest positive and significant genotypic and phenotypic correlation coefficient was recorded for the number of umbels correlated between biological yields and seed yield. On the other hand, the path coefficient study revealed that the harvest index has the maximum direct contribution followed by biological yield, number of primary branches, and umbels on the seed yield. Results clearly showed variation in important economic traits could facilitate selection for further genetic improvement in A. visnaga genotypes. In this study, several unique accessions were identified that might be exciting genotypes for the genetic modification of the different morphometric characters in the hybridization program. The accession no. AV-45 was having the highest carotol (66.1 %), followed by AV-7 carotol (66.0 %). Therefore, these accessions can be further exploited for commercial production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides (L.) Roberty (Poaceae) is a perennial herbaceous grass. It is cultivated for the production of high-value essential oil, which imparts a robust and persistent woody odor escorted with different undertones such as earthy, grapefruit-like, flowery, smoked, ambery, etc. The study aims to determine the genotypic and chemotypic diversity in twenty-three genetic stocks of vetiver. The nature, proportion and degree of genetic diversity were evaluated using Mahalanobis D2-statistics on seven agro-economical quantitative traits. All the vetiver accessions were grouped into six clusters wherein, the inter-cluster distance was observed maximum in between I and III cluster pair (117.18) and minimum in II and IV cluster pair (64.98). Among seven economic characters, plant height (59.33 %) was found to be leading contributor toward genetic diversity, followed by essential oil yield (10.43 %). However, root length (2.77 %) showed the lowest contributing character towards genetic diversity. The genetic variability was also studied through percentage chemical constituents present in the essential oils. The result of the present study concluded to enhance the traits of auspicious OPSPs accessions, responsible for high oil yields with specific chemical constituents to meet the market demand of khus essential oil. The accession VS-20 and VS-23 were found to be highly divergent genotypes among all and could be chosen for further exploitation in the hybrid breeding program to develop superior cultivars of vetiver. The clones rich in specific constituent like khusinol (VS-9), khusimol (VS-11) and khusilal (VS-17) and high essential oil could also be selected for further exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]