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Plant Gene and Trait, 2013, Vol.4, No.2, 4
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Research Report Open Access
Genetic Diversity in Eggplant (
Solanum melongena
L.)
S. Ramesh Kumar
1
,
T. Arumugam
2
,
C.R. Anandakumar
3
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
Corresponding author email:
rameshamar06@gmail.com;
Authors
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.
Preferred citation for this article:
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)
Abstract
Genetic divergence among 14 eggplant genotypes was estimated using Mahalanobis’s D
2
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
Ⅱ
and cluster
Ⅴ
. 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.
Keywords
Eggplant (
Solanum melongena
L.); Genetic diversity; Cluster analysis
1 Introduction
Eggplant or brinjal was first cultivated in India which
is regarded as the primary centre of origin/diversity.
India is the major producer of brinjal in the world and
it is grown in an a area of 0.61million ha with an esti-
mated annual production of 13.37 million tonnes with
a productivity of 17.3 tonnes per ha. In Tamil Nadu
the production was 8.5 lakh tonnes from 0.75 lakh ha
of area (Anonymous, 2010). Information on genetic
divergence among the available germplasm is vital to
a plant breeder for an efficient choice of parents for
hybridization. It is an established fact that genetically
diverse parents are likely to contribute desirable
segregants. It was also observed that the more diverse
the parents, greater are the chances of obtaining high
heterotic F
1
s and broad spectrum of variability in the
segregating generation (Arunachalam, 1981). Improv-
ement in yield and quality is normally achieved by
selecting genotypes with desirable character combin-
ations existing in the nature or by hybridization. Sele-
ction of parents identified on the basis of divergence
analysis would be more promising for a hybridization
programme. Some related results have been reported
in eggplant by Kumar et al. (2000), Singh and Gopala-
krishnan (1999), Chaudhary and Pathania (1998) and
Tambe et al. (1993). These studies did not cover any
local cultivars/genotypes. Therefore, the present inve-
stigation was undertaken to estimate the nature and
magnitude of genetic diversity in some eggplant
genotypes. This type of study would be useful for
breeding eggplant varieties in the country.
2 Results and Discussion
The use of Mahalanobis D
2
statistics for estimating
genetic divergence have been emphasized by many
workers Patil et al. (1994) and Mishra et al. (1998)
because it permits precise comparison among all
possible pairs of population in any given group
effecting actual crosses.
2.1 Clustering Pattern
In the present study, fourteen genotypes were evaluated
for fifteen characters and the analysis revealed the
presence of wide genetic diversity as they formed six
gene constellations. Among the six clusters, cluster III
had constituted maximum of five genotypes out of
fourteen assembled from different geographical location
(Table 1). The clustering pattern revealed that the
genotype did not resolve according to their geographical