ASSESSMENT OF GENETIC DIVERSITY IN 35 SOYBEAN GENOTYPES (GLYCINE MAX (L.) MERRIL)

In the present investigation, thirty-five soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merril) genotypes were evaluated to study genetic diversity using Mahalanobis D 2 statistics.The experiment was conducted at Research Farm, Agricultural research station, Kasbe Digraj (Sangli) during rabi 2022.Data were recorded on ten quantitative characters.The thirty-five genotypes of soybean were grouped into six clusters using the Tocher method.Of the six clusters formed, clusters I and IV were the largest groups, comprising ten and nine genotypes, respectively, followed by cluster II with seven genotypes, and clusters III, V, and VI with three genotypes each.Clusters and had the greatest inter-cluster distance (D=11.86).Intracluster distance ranged between 3.43 to 5.63.The biggest contribution to total divergence came from character Trypsin inhibitor activity (77.65 %).Based on cluster mean values for a given character, we can select highly divergent genotypes from the respective clusters for crossing work.