The Application of D2 Statistic to Measure Genetic Divergence in Different Bread Wheat Genotypes
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Date
2014-06
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Addis Abeba university
Abstract
Wheat is one of the most important cereal crop in Ethiopia, ranking third in total
production next to maize and teff. Wheat covers a total arable land of 110,434 ha with
average productivity of about 8.4 qt /ha, which is below the national production average
(14.4 qt /ha). The objective of this research was to study the genetic dissimilarity among
twenty bread wheat genotypes. The study is made based on twenty bread wheat genotypes
which was obtained in 2007 and 2008 from trials conducted by the Ethiopian Institute of
Agricultural Research (EIAR) and were evaluated for their diversity to estimate the
genetic divergence and clustering them into homoGenous groups for the hybridization
program in 8 environments using Mahalanobis D2 statistic. The D2 value data can be
used in cluster analysis to identify groups of related cultivars. Using UPGMA clustering
technique all the Geno types were grouped into six cluster on the basis of D2 value using
Tocher's optimization technique. The intra- and inter-cluster D2 values suggested that
within cluster genetic diversity is narrow, but the genetic diversity among clusters is
greater. Therefore, The presence of significant genetic variability among the evaluated
bread wheat genotypes suggests an opportunity for improvement of grain yield through
hybridization of genotypes from different clusters and subsequent selection from the
segregating generations would broaden the genetic base of bread wheat breeding
populations. Thus, those analysis based on multivariate methods using D2 statistic is
useful in providing information for more efficient variety development programmes.
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Statistic to Measure Genetic