Study of Genetic Diversity in Forage Sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench]

Analysis of genetic divergence through Mahalanobis D2 statistics exhibited considerable genetic diversity among genotypes. The thirty genotypes of forage sorghum were grouped into 6 clusters. The cluster II (14 genotypes) and cluster I (7 genotypes) having the maximum number of genotypes. This envisaged that the genotypes grouped within a particular cluster were more or less genetically similar to each other and apparent wide diversity was mainly due to the remaining genotypes distributed over rest of the other clusters. Percent contribution and expression of characters towards the genetic divergence play an important role in selecting the superior genotypes among diverse genotypes. Plant height had maximum contribution towards the genetic divergence followed by green fodder yield, leaf stem ratio and number of leaves per plant and remaining characters noted very low contribution percent towards the genetic divergence. Maximum intra cluster distance was recorded in cluster IV, indicating greater genetic divergence between the genotypes belonging to these clusters and crosses involving genotypes viz., CSV-15, CSV-17, Pant Chari-8, CSV-16 and Pant Chari-7 are suggested. Crosses in the above combinations are expected to provide enough genetic variability to select high green fodder yield and stable segregates in the segregating generations.