Genetic Divergence Study in Groundnut Genotypes (Arachishypogaea L.)

Employing the Mahalanobis D2 statistic, a divergence study was performed on 36 groundnut genotypes and 13 clusters were identified. Indicating that the genotypes of these groups may be more divergent from one another, the maximum inter-cluster distance (D) was found between cluster II and cluster XIII (315.56), followed by cluster III and cluster IX (289.56), cluster III and cluster XII (289.21), and cluster XII and cluster XIII (297.11). The genotypes in the mentioned clusters showed a significant difference in the means for traits that contribute significantly to yield, indicating that the genotypes in these clusters make ideal parents in a hybridization programme to produce transgressive segregants and improve groundnut.