Genetic Divergence Studies for Morphological Traits in Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] over the Environments

Genetic diversity is an essential prerequisite for improving the genetic makeup of any crop. Inclusion of genetically diverse parents in hybridization programme helps in isolation of superior recombinants. So, an experiment was conducted to investigate the genetic diversity among 150 genotypes of sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] Rajasthan during Kharif - 2013, 2014 and 2015 in a Randomized Block Design (RBD) with three replications. Present study reveals that the clustering pattern based on D2 statistics grouped 150 genotypes into 6 clusters, out of which cluster 1 shows the highest intra cluster value (142.62) followed by cluster 2 (119.47). While maximum inter cluster distance (i.e.652.68) was observed between cluster 5 and cluster 6, indicating there is presence of wide range of genetic diversity among the sorghum genotypes. Such genotypes with wide genetic diversity based on their mean values can either be utilized for breeding programmes for genetic improvement in sorghum or directly adopted as a variety.