Assessment of genetic diversity for yield and yield contributing traits in peanut(Arachis hypogaea L.)

Thirty-three advanced breeding lines of peanut were evaluated during kharif, 2019 using Mahalanobis D2 statistics for 19 characters including physiological, yield and quality traits and were grouped into nine clusters, where cluster IV was the largest containing 11 genotypes followed by cluster III and II with 8 and 7 genotypes respectively. Highest inter-cluster distance was observed between cluster VII and IX (118.10) followed by cluster V and VI (113.29) and cluster V and IX (106.42), respectively. The maximum intra-cluster distance was observed in cluster IV (31.37) followed by cluster III (20.11) and II (13.17). Hundred kernel weight contributed maximum towards genetic divergence followed by sound mature kernel (%), specific leaf area at 45 DAS, oil content and plant height. The crosses viz., TCGS-2141 × TCGS-2117, Narayani × TCGS-1887, Narayani × TCGS-2117, Narayani × TCGS-2111 and TCGS-1887 × TCGS-2141 could be recommended to get desirable transgressive segregants for physiological, yield and quality traits.