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Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) is a spice cum vegetable crop belonging to the family Solanaceae. It has different uses at mature green, red ripe and dried stages. Crop improvement in chilli has so far been achieved by exploiting the available sources of the variability. Naturally, the genetic variation or diversity for most of the yield attributes is considerably high in chilli. In the present study we used 63 chilli genotypes which include germplasm accessions, local cultivars, and released varieties. This experiment was undertaken to study genetic diversity and selection of suitable genotypes for future hybridization program. 26 character were studied for the better assessment of genetic diversity present between 63 genotypes. Using Mahalanobis4 D2 statistics method, 63 genotypes were grouped into 5 divergent clusters. The 63 chilli genotypes included in the present study had considerable diversity as observed by the magnitude of all possible D2 values, which ranged from 25.45 to 64.66. These 63 genotypes were grouped into 5 clusters based on similarity of D2 values. It is desirable to select genotypes from clusters having high inter cluster distance and with high fruit yield as parents in the recombination breeding programmes.
Key words: Diversity, Cluster, D2 statistics, Hybridization