Assessment of Variability among Indian Garlic Cultivars Based on Morphological Traits

By : Abhilash Nair , Anil Khar , Ritesh Kaur , C P Malik

Page No: 157-170

Abstract
Garlic propagates only asexually leading to the absence of meiotic recombination. Garlic cultivars available for cultivation in India have arisen from the accumulation of somatic mutations in early cultivars. Present study intended to evaluate the genetic diversity of 96 accessions collected from major garlic growing states and two exotic accessions by using morphological traits to identify possible duplicate cultivars, and to assess genetic divergence. We assessed 15 morphological characters associated with leaves, bulbs, and bulbils of the garlic plant. Genetic divergence was calculated using the Jaccard coefficient; the cultivars were grouped using unweighted pair-group mean analysis. The average genetic divergence detected using the morphological characters was 2.30 (range, 0.45-4.70). Plant height and coat adhesion exhibited the highest divergence among the cultivars. Most of the cultivars revealed only slight differences, suggesting that these cultivars may be clones or have a high degree of affinity.

Authors :
Abhilash Nair, Anil Khar, Ritesh Kaur and C P Malik : School of Life Sciences, Jaipur National University, Jaipur, India