Studies on Genetic Diversity and Principal Component Analysis in Wheat Germplasm (Triticum aestivum L.)

This study aimed to assess the potential genetic diversity among wheat genotypes by using cluster analysis and principal component analysis for selection of desired parents in hybridization programmes. The study was carried out at the Crop Research Center, Department of Agriculture, Himgiri Zee University, Dehradun, Uttarakhand, during Rabi season 2021-2022 under irrigated conditions. Twenty germplasm lines of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) were grown in Randomized Block Design with three replications with an objective to study the genetic variability and diversity through D2 statistics in wheat. The Analysis of variance revealed the significant differences among the genotypes for all the traits studied indicating that the presence of genetic material under the study. The clustering pattern as per Tocher’s optimization method obtained on the basis of magnitude of D2 value revealed that the twenty genotypes were grouped into five clusters. The maximum intra cluster D2 value was observed in cluster I (130.89) followed by cluster II (108.06) and cluster III (97.93). The inter cluster distance values ranged from 249.44 to 1101.59. The maximum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster II and IV (1101.59) followed by II and III (1017.07) that indicated wide divergence existed among the genotypes of these clusters. From the results obtained by Principal component analysis six principal components PC 1 to PC6, which are extracted from the original data and having latent roots greater than one thereby accounting to 84.30% of the total variation.