Diversity in Sesame Accessions

Sesame known to be the most ancient oilseed crop in the world and well recognized for good quality edible oil due its high PUFA content, antioxidant properties, excellent nutritional and medicinal properties. The present investigation aims at analyzing the genetic diversity of 205 genotypes for 8 morphological characters. Phenotypic coefficients of variation exhibited a bit higher values but maintained a close relation with genotypic variation and genotypic co-efficient of variation for all the traits, indicating low G×E interaction. A combination of high heritability (broad sense) and high genetic advance indicate preponderance of additive gene action which is fixable. Additive gene action was prominent for the traits like no of capsules/plant, seed yield/plant, and primary branches/plant. Hierarchical cluster analysis based on agro-morphological traits results revealed that the inter cluster distance in most cases was larger indicating wider diversity among the germplasm of different groups. The maximum inter cluster distance was found between clusters V and III, followed by clusters V and II, clusters VI and II. The principal component analysis revealed that capsule number and 1000-seed weight had a strong relation with seed yield, suggesting the need for more emphasis on these components for increasing the seed yield in sesame.