Analysis of qualitative morphological trait diversity in sugarcane (Saccharum spp., Hybrid) germplasm

Abstract The success of any crop improvement program depends on the extent of genetic diversity present in the germplasm. The current study's aim was to determine the level of qualitative morphological trait diversity among sugarcane germplasm. Shannon-Weaver diversity index (H’) values of characters for the 196 sugarcane genotypes ranged from 0.08 to 0.94, with a mean of value 0.65. This indicates the presence of a wide range of qualitative morphological trait variability among the sugarcane genotypes. The H' pooled across locations by character, and the H' pooled across characters by location, ranged from 0.06 to 0.82; and 0.00 to 0.84, respectively, with a mean value of 0.53 in both cases. Multivariate cluster analysis divided the entire sugarcane into three distinct groups. The distance between groups of genotypes, and a pair of individual sugarcane genotypes ranged from 9.77 to 12.74, and 0.51 to 15.56, respectively. The non-zero lowest distance value between genotypes 1 and 22 indicates that there was no duplication among the materials tested. Additionally, the lowest distance value between them indicates the presence of high qualitative morphological trait similarity emanating from high genetic resemblance. Conversely, the maximum distance value was observed between genotypes 82 and 132. This indicates that these two genotypes had highly contrasting and complementing qualitative morphological traits and, hence had high genetic divergence that could be utilized. Generally, we deduced that the study discovered high genetic diversity among the genotypes and identified divergent parental combinations to be used as parents to develop an improved sugarcane variety.