Assessment of Genetic Diversity of Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.) in the coastal region of Karaikal, India

Genetic divergence among 25 brinjal genotypes for 13 characters was evaluated in a breeding programme aimed at improving yield potential by using Mahalanobis D2 statistics. The genotypes were grouped into six clusters suggesting considerable amount of genetic diversity in the study material. The cluster I had constituted maximum of 17 genotypes followed by cluster II which had three genotypes and cluster IV with two genotypes. The cluster III, cluster V and cluster VI each had one genotype. The intra-cluster D2 value ranged from 0.00 to 61.67 and the inter-cluster D2 value ranged from 89.49 to 343.51. The maximum intra-cluster distance of 61.67 was exhibited by the cluster I followed by cluster IV and cluster III, V, VI. The inter cluster distance was found to be high between cluster II and IV followed by cluster IV and V, cluster II and VI and cluster II and V. The contribution of different characters towards divergence indicated that, fruit yield per plant contributed the maximum percentage of 79.00 towards genetic divergence followed by individual fruit weight (8.00 percent) and number of fruits per cluster (3.00 percent). Thus, it indicated that the genotypes from cluster IV (fruit yield per plant), cluster VI (individual fruit weight) and cluster IV (number of fruits cluster-1) could be selected for crop improvement in brinjal as they recorded higher cluster mean values for traits contributing maximum towards genetic divergence.