Assessment of Genetic Divergence in White Finger Millet [Eleusine coracana (L.) Gaertn.] Genotypes for Yield and Yield Contributing Traits

The present investigation is carried out to study the genetic divergence among 55 finger millet genotypes for fourteen quantitative characters using Mahalanobis D2 statistics during kharif, 2020. D2 statistics indicated that the genotypes studied were genetically diverse. The 55 genotypes of finger millet were grouped into 6 clusters irrespective of geographical diversity, indicating no parallelism between geographic and genetic diversity. Clusters I had highest number of 50 genotypes and remaining all clusters had solitary. A wider genetic diversity was observed for the different traits studied among the genotypes as evidenced by the formation of six clusters. Out of fourteen quantitative traits studied grain yield per plant contributed majorly towards divergence with the value of 15.65% followed by productive tillers per plant contributes (12%), harvest index (10%) and other traits contribute minorly for divergence.