2024, Vol. 7, Special Issue 7

author(s)
Zate DK, Rathod AH, Faria S Khan and Shelke Supriya

abstract
The success of crop improvement programme is mainly based on genetic diversity available in the breeding material. Genetic diversity helps in selecting the suitable parents for hybridization. Genetic diversity is a key factor for crop improvement. Therefore, the present investigation was carried out to assess the genetic diversity present in 52 okra genotypes for yield and yield contributing traits. In the present study, 52 okra genotypes were grouped in six clusters on the basis of relative magnitude of D² values. Cluster I contain maximum number of genotypes (24) followed by cluster II (17) and cluster III (8). The inter cluster distance was higher than the intra cluster distance indicating wide genetic diversity among the genotypes of different groups. The maximum genetic distance was observed between cluster II and VI followed by cluster I and VI, cluster IV and VI and cluster V and VI. The maximum intra cluster distance were expressed by cluster III followed by cluster I and cluster II. The genotypes which were in cluster I, III and VI exhibited significant performance for yield per plant, number of fruits per plant, fruit weight, fruit length, fruit girth, number of ridges per fruit, number of nodes per plant, plant height, number of branches per plant, internodal length, number of seeds per fruit and 100 seed weight. The relative contribution of studied characters indicated that yield per plant (54.00%) maximum contributed to total variation followed by number of ridges per fruit (15.69%), number of seeds per fruit (10.78%), 100 seed weight (4.52%) and days to 50 percent flowering (4.37%). Based on principal component analysis (PCA), these components explained 89.36% of total genetic variation. These characters are highly genetic variable and genotypes having these characters in different cluster could be used in breeding programme to develop high yielding cultivars in okra.