Morphological characterization and genetic divergence analysis of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis jacq.) hybrids

Genetic diversity was investigated in 10 oil palm hybrids at the Horticultural Research Station in Vijayrai, Andhra Pradesh, India. Morphological characteristics were recorded, among all hybrids, NRCOP-4 recorded highest values for all nine parameters and diversity was analyzed using Mahalanobis D² clustering and principal component analysis (PCA). The genetic diversity of ten hybrids were classified into four clusters. Clusters 1 and 3 were the largest of the four, each containing four hybrids. Intra and Inter cluster distance of clusters was analyzed by D². According to D² analysis maximum intra cluster distance was observed in Cluster 3, minimum in Cluster 2 and Cluster 4. The first three main principal components (PCS) have more Eigen values and explained 84.77% of the overall variability among the ten hybrids. These clusters have a greater genetic distance, and hybrids with more desirable features have the potential to grow into superior hybrids. Pearson correlation coefficient showed that bunch traits are strongly correlated with the bunch yield components.