Abstract

                                In order to develop improved breeding lines having superior yield and oil content, it is essential to have genetically diverse parental lines. Hence, an attempt was made to find out genetic divergence of twenty four breeding lines for eight traits in sunflower. To assess the genetic divergence among the 24 genotypes in sunflower, Mahalanobis D2 statistics was applied for eight traits. The genotypes were grouped into ten clusters where cluster I was the largest containing thirteen genotypes followed by cluster IV with three genotypes. The inter-cluster distance was the maximum between cluster VI and cluster VIII followed by cluster IV and cluster VI and cluster VI and cluster IX. Thus, the parents, CSFI 5415 of cluster VI, CSFI 5068 of cluster VIII, 17 A, 47 A and CSFI 5325 of cluster IV, CSFI 5415 of cluster VI, CSFI 5415 of cluster VI and CSFI 5436 of cluster IX should be involved in crosses. They might give high heterotic response and wider segregations after hybridization. The study revealed that plant height contributed maximum divergence (45.29%) which was followed by seed yield per plant (25.72%) and oil content (15.94%). Based on the inter cluster distance and per se performance the genotypes viz., 17A, 47A, CSFI 5325, CSFI 5415, CSFI 5436 and CSFI 5013 were identified as suitable parents which could be intercrossed to obtain high heterosis and also to recover desirable transgressive segregants

Key words : Sunflower, D2 statistics, genetic divergence