Morphology-based genetic diversity analysis of sesame germplasm for yield and capsule characters

Forty five Indian sesame genotypes were evaluated for their genetic diversity for seed yield and yield attributing characters as well as capsule shattering characters. The genotypes were classified into five clusters, based on Mahalanobis D2 statistic. Results on inter-cluster distances revealed maximum diversity between genotypes of cluster II and IV. Further, capsule width has the highest contribution to total divergence followed by thousand seed weight, seed number per capsule, capsule length and seed yield per plant indicating their importance in the choice of parents for developing semi shattering genotypes.