Abstract

                                An experiment was conducted to analyze the genetic diversity among 40 genotypes for 15 quantitative characters which were grouped into 7 clusters based on Mahalanobis D2analysis with cluster I and III being the largest each with 8 genotypes followed by 7 genotypes in cluster VII. Based on Hierarchial cluster analysis all the genotypes were grouped into 7 clusters with cluster VII being the largest each with 13 genotypes followed by 8 genotypes in cluster IV. This random distribution of genotypes indicated absence of parallelism between geographical and genetic diversity. In Principal component analysis first seven principal components with eigen value more than one contributed 87.98 per cent towards the total variability with PC1 alone showing maximum of 22.27 per cent variability.

Key words : Cotton, Mahalanobis D2 analysis, Hierarchial cluster analysis, Principal component analysis