Assessment of Genetic Divergence for Forage Yield and Biochemical Traits in Sorghum [Sorghum Bicolor L. Moench] Germplasm

The present investigation was carried out with two hundred eighty sorghum germplasm lines in augmented block design at GBPUAT, Pantnagar under normal sown condition during the Kharif season 2018. The observations were recorded on different yield contributing traits such as days to flowering, plant height, number of leaves; stem girthetc., quality traits such as protein content, total soluble solids, in vivo dry matter digestibility etc., and biochemical traits like cellulose content, silica content, and hemicelluloses etc. The statistical analysis for genetic diversity was done using hierarchical cluster analysis. The hierarchical cluster analysis revealed that significant amount of genetic diversity was present in sorghum germplasm with respect to different yield relate traits, quality traits and biochemical traits. The 280 germplasm lines were grouped into XI distinct non-overlapping clusters. The cluster-I (52) consisted of highest number of genotypes whereas lowest numbers of genotypes were exhibited by cluster-XI (1). The highest intra-cluster distance was exhibited by cluster-I (52.381) whereas lowest intra-cluster distance was exhibited by cluster-XI (0.000). The clusters with high intra-cluster distances suggested that genotypes in these clusters were more genetic diverse than the genotypes in other clusters with low intra-cluster distances. The maximum inter-cluster distance was observed between clusters-IV and XI (346.854) suggested distant relationship between members of these two clusters and upon crossing the members of these two clusters will give more genetic diversity in segregating generation whereas minimum inter-cluster distance was observed between clusters-VIII and IX (46.803) suggested a closer relationship between these two clusters and low degree of genetic diversity among the genotypes. Presence of substantial genetic diversity among the genotypes screened in the present study indicated that this material may serve as a good source for selecting the diverse parents for hybridization programme. In order to increase the possibility of isolating good trangressive segregants in the segregating generations it would be logical to attempt crosses between the diverse genotypes belonging to clusters separated by large inter-cluster distances.