GENETIC DIVERGENCE STUDIES IN HIGH ZINC AND DROUGHT TOLERANT RICE (Oryza sativa L.) ACCESSIONS USING MORPHOLOGICAL TRAITS

Morphological characterization of twenty three rice accessions which includes, four of high Zinc (R-RHZ-7, CGZR-1, IR83294-66-2-2-3-2 and IR83668-35-2-2-2), fifteen of drought tolerant and four checks (Swarna, MTU-1010, Sahbagidhan and NDR-97) was done to observe genetic diversity to identify suitable genotypes for future breeding program. Data on fifteen morphological characters were recorded for this study. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed the highly significant differences among the accessions for all the characters under study which explains a wide range of morphological diversity among them. These accessions were grouped into five different clusters based on Tocher method of clustering. Cluster I contains 7 out of 23 accessions, cluster II comprises 6 accessions and cluster III having 8 accessions. Clusters IV and V consist of only one accession each, indicating their distinctness among themselves and also from other accessions. The highest intra-cluster distance was observed in the cluster III (754.11) which comprised of 8 accessions. The highest inter-cluster distance (6465.17) was found between cluster II and V followed by cluster I and V (4819.21) and cluster III and V (3431.24). The smallest inter-cluster distance (555.01) was observed between I and II followed by cluster I and III (759.32) and cluster II and III (1428.35). The highest intra-cluster distance was found in cluster III (754.11) and least was found in clusters IV and V due to their monogenotypic nature. The clusters II and V found to be most diverse and hybridization between the accessions of these clusters may produce desirable segregants