Genetic diversity in brinjal genotypes under eastern Indian conditions

Abstract

Brinjal or eggplant or aubergine (Solanum melongena) is the most popular and widely cultivated vegetable crop in the Central, Southern and in South-east Asia and in some African countries. The cultivated brinjal, Solanum melongena, is extremely variable in India. In the present study 40 genotypes of brinjal collected from different places in the country and abroad were evaluated for different morphophysiological characters and genetic diversity was measured among the genotypes through D2 statistics. All the nine characters under study differed significantly among the forty genotypes. The range of D2 values varied from 8.13 to 8015.95 which revealed high variability among the genotypes. Based on the degree of divergence the genotypes were grouped into ten clusters among which cluster ten was the largest having 22 genotypes. The divergence within the cluster showed medium and consistent level of divergence in all the clusters except cluster ten which had highest intra cluster distance. The top two characters which contributed most towards the genetic divergence were fruit yield and fruit weight. Dendrogram among the genotypes also revealed high diversity along with strong intra and inter cluster relationships.