Genetic Diversity Studies in MAGIC Population of Soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) Based on Mahalanobis D2 Distance

Soybean MAGIC lines are highly variable breeding material which utilizes both recent and historic genetic recombination events. Present investigation was carried out to assess the genetic diversity present among 95 soybean MAGIC lines along with six checks for 10 different quantitative traits. All the genotypes were grouped into 16 clusters by performing Tocher’s clustering method using Mahalanobis D2 distance. Cluster I was the largest comprising of 30 genotypes followed by cluster II (23 genotypes), cluster X (15 genotypes) and cluster IX (9 genotypes). The maximum genetic distance (D2) was observed between cluster XI and XV (168.37) followed by cluster III and XV (164.3), cluster X and XV (149.64) as well as between cluster XII and cluster XVI (145.99). The cluster mean for most of the traits were high in cluster I and cluster XVI. Oil content contributed maximum (23.86%) towards total genetic diversity followed by number of pods plant-1 (18.97%), seed yield plant-1 (18.63%), 100 seed weight (11.05%) and number of branches plant-1 (10.16%) traits. The soybean MAGIC lines belong to the cluster XI (6-120) and cluster XV (6-30, 6-31, 6-5) were found to be the most divergent hence can be utilised in the recombination breeding programs to exploit maximum heterosis.