Genetic divergence in indigenous and exotic genotypes of mungbean

The genetic diversity of 36 exotic and indigenous mungbean genotypes collected from AVRDC (Taiwan) and India were evaluated during summer 2006 at Agricultural Research Station, Sriganganagar, Rajasthan, India. Nine characters were computed by Mahalanobis' D-2 technique. The genotypes were grouped into clusters following Tocher's method and relative contribution of characters towards divergence was estimated using canonical analysis. Based on relative magnitude of D 2 values, 36 genotypes were grouped into seven clusters. The cluster distance ranged from 0.0-1.0 within clusters and 7.0-30.6 between clusters. The highest inter-cluster genetic distance was found between clusters II and VII (30.6) followed by VI and VII (30.2), II and V (29.5) and II and III (28.6). The distance was lowest between clusters III and V (7.0) followed by IV and VI (12.7), III and VII (12.9) and I and III (13.4). Cluster It showed maximum genetic distance and cluster III showed maximum closeness to all other clusters. The diversity in the present material was also supported by the appreciable amount of variation among cluster means for different characters. The above results suggest that genotypes from the cluster 11, IV, V and VII may yield better recombinants.