S. Ramesh kumar¹ , T. Arumugam² , C.R. Anandakumar³

1. Assistant Professor, Department of Horticulture, Vanavarayar Institute of Agriculture, Manakkadavu, Pollachi, TNAU, Tamil Nadu, India;
2. Professor, Department of Horticulture, Agricultural College and Research Institute, TNAU, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India;
3. Professor, Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Agricultural College and Research Institute, TNAU, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
Author    Correspondence author
Plant Gene and Trait, 2013, Vol. 4, No. 2   doi: 10.5376/pgt.2013.04.0002
Received: 26 Jan., 2013    Accepted: 05 Feb., 2013    Published: 20 Mar., 2013

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

 Kumar et al., 2013, Genetic Diversity in Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.), Plant Gene and Trait, Vol.4, No.2 4-8 (doi: 10.5376/pgt.2013.04.0002)

Genetic divergence among 14 eggplant genotypes was estimated using Mahalanobis’s D² statistic. Altogether six clusters were formed. The maximum number of genotypes (5) was found in cluster III with intra cluster distance of 2 597.79. The maximum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster â…¡ and cluster â…¤. Hence, genotypes belonging to these clusters may be utilized for involving in hybridization programme for crop improvement. The characters of yield per plant, fruit circumference, little leaf incidence and total phenols content contributed more for genetic divergence.

Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.); Genetic diversity; Cluster analysis