Genetic diversity and chemotype selection in genus Ocimum

The present study was conducted to examin the genetic diversity and clustring pattern among twenty five accessions of basil. The highly significant ANOVA results indicated the presence of high amount of genetic variability which was also confirmed by the wide range of D2-values (0.074-212.97). The all accessions, grouped into seven divers clusters (I-VII). The intra-cluster divergence was maximum within cluster-VII (D2 = 43.32), the inter-cluster divergence was highest between clusters-II and VI (D2 = 155.59). The high genetic divergences among the accession were also confirmed by spatial distribution analysis. The contribution of the character towords the genetic diversity was highest for oil content 56.09% followed by plant height 18.94% and the lowest rank was recorded for the number of branches 7.55%. The highly divergent accessions namely, G-4, G-7, G-9, G-11, G-18 and G-25 may be exploited for further crop improvement for the development of high essential oil yielding Ocimum cultivars of better quality.