Genetic variability analysis of coloured grape varieties for berry traits.

Abstract

Genetic variability present among the genotypes help the breeder to decide the parents for different crossing programmes; besides diversity amongst the parent increases the chances for the exploitation of heterosis. The present investigation was planned to analyse the genetic diversity among twenty six coloured and seeded grape cultivars for five important fruit traits viz., berry diameter (mm), berry length (mm), single berry weight (g), average bunch weight and bunch length (mm) using principal component analysis and cluster analysis. For the traits under study, the principal component one (PC1) with Eigen values 3.63 has contributed to 72.61% of variability; whereas principal component two (PC2) has contributed 22.88% variability and the cumulative variability among the 26 grape genotypes depicted by PC1 and PC2 was 95.49%. The twenty six grape genotypes were grouped into three clusters. Among all the clusters, cluster-I has highest number of grape genotypes (15) followed by cluster-III (06) and cluster-II (05) respectively. The high intra and inter cluster distances indicates the presence of substantial amount of genetic diversity in the genetic material.