Estimating genetic divergence in rice (Oryza sativa L.) using D² analysis.

Rice is the staple food across Asia, where around half of the world's poorest people live and hence that necessitates breeding for high yielding genotypes. Genetic diversity present in the germplasm is pre-requisite for crop improvement as it helps in the development of superior recombinants. Knowledge about genetic diversity between the genotype can be utilized for the selection of diverse parents in hybridization programmes. In this study, using Mahalanobis D² statistics twenty four advanced genotypes were grouped into five different clusters based on their level of divergence. The Cluster III displayed the maximum intra-cluster distance with six genotypes followed by cluster II with ten genotypes. The cluster II and IV exhibited the maximum inter-cluster distance. Among the traits, days to 50% flowering contributed the highest towards total divergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]