Asian Journal of Advances in Agricultural Research

The present research consist of 57 (20 Parents and 37 F1s) radish genotypes to study the agronomic characteristics, the genetic diversity of these genotypes and to investigate the heterotic effects of the F₁ hybrids which is developed thought self-incompatibility mechanism and to know the relationship between the diversity among the parents and high heterosis expressed in the selected hybrids. The genetic divergence among 57 genotypes of radish (Raphanus sativus L) was determined through PCO, PCA, Cluster analysis (CLSA) and Mohalanobis’s D2 analysis. Through multivariate analysis based on 16 characters, 57 genotypes were grouped into five distant clusters. All the genotypes were grouped into five clusters. The highest inter–cluster distance was observed between cluster II and III and the lowest between II and V. The maximum values of the inter-cluster distance indicated that the genotypes belonging to cluster II and cluster V have far diverged from those of cluster III. The relationship study between genetic diversity and heterosis revealed that genetic distance between cluster II and cluster V was lowest (1.823) but the cross between the parental genotypes showed better heterotic performance among 37 crosses. Significant positive correlation between genetic distance and heterosis was found in pod length. Considering heterotic performance and self-incompatibility status the crosses P₇Xp₈ (SIXSI), P₃₁XP₂₆ (SIXSI), P₄XP₂₂ (SCXSI), P₂₄XP₂₆ (SIXSI), P₄XP₃₁ (SCXSI), P₁₁XP₃₁ (SCXSI), and P22XP23 (SIXSI) appeared to be promising.