Genetic diversity in Indian oat (Avena sativa L.) varieties for biomass and seed yield traits

Abstract

An experiment was conducted during winter seasons of 2014-15 and 2015-16 with 27 released varieties of oats recommended for cultivation in different agro-ecological zones of India. These varieties were evaluated for 14 morphological and phenological traits related to fodder and seed yields at multi-cut conditions. Oat cultivars exhibited wide array of expression for all studied traits and varied significantly. Association analysis showed that biomass yield and seed yield were independent with each other. Principal components (PC 1 to PC 6) cumulatively accounted for 82.17% of the total variation present among the varieties. The dendrogram constructed using average linkage cluster analysis classified the test varieties into three diverse clusters. The results indicated that highest diversity exists for green forage yield, seed yield, plant height, dry matter yield and 1000 seed weight. Based on the study it was concluded that released varieties of oat in the country have ample variability for most of the traits included in the study.