Studies on genetic divergence in Brinjal (Solanum melongena L.)

Thirty-five genotypes of brinjal were studied for genetic diversity using Mahalanobi's D² statistics. The genotypes were grouped into eight clusters irrespective of geographic divergence, indicating no parallelism between geographic and genetic diversity. Group constellation proved that Punjab Sadabahar was highly divergent from all other genotypes and can effectively be used as one of the parent in hybrid breeding programme to exploit heterotic expressions for yield and other economic characters. Thus for the management of diversity, the cluster analysis approach may be the most effective one.