Assessment of Genetic Diversity of Chickpea Genotypes (Cicer arietinum L.) Using D2 Statistics

An experiment using twenty genotypes of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) was conducted during Rabi season of 2019-2020, to find the genetic diversity using D2 statistics. The experiment was laid out in randomized block design with three replications at the experimental field of Himgiri Zee University, Dehradun. The observations was recorded on nine quantitative characters where five randomly selected plants were taken the average was computed while the traits days to 50 % flowering and days to 100 % maturity was taken from plot basis. Results revealed that the genotypes were grouped into 4 clusters where Cluster-I had fifteen genotypes and cluster II had three genotypes while one genotype each was present in cluster III and IV. The seed yield per plant contributed maximum towards genetic diversity (32.00 %) followed by plant height at maturity (14.00 %) and number of secondary branches (9.00 %). The maximum intra cluster distance was found in cluster II (164.691) indicating that the 15 genotypes including in the cluster II were most divergent. However, maximum inter cluster distance was noticed between cluster I and cluster II (313.247) which could be used in hybridizing program.