BIODIVERSITY AMONG INDIAN JUJUBE (ZIZIPHUS MAURITIANA LAMK.) GENOTYPES FOR POWDERY MILDEW AND OTHER TRAITS

Indian ber (Ziziphus mauritiana Lamk.) is one of the most ancient fruits indigenous to India. It grows throughout the tropical, sub-tropical and arid regions. There is little information available on the genetic diversity of this important underutilized fruit crop. The reduction of genetic variability makes the crop vulnerable to diseases and other adverse factors. Morphological variation among thirty five important ber genotypes collected from different parts of India were studied at CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India, during 2005-2006. Ten morphological traits viz., powdery mildew, leaf length, leaf breath, leaf area, fruit weight, fruit length, fruit breath, stone weight, stone length, stone breath were recorded and data analyzed by using Mahalanobis’s D² Statistic using Tocher’s method. All the genotypes were classified into VII distinct clusters. Cluster I was the largest with nine genotypes followed by cluster IV (six genotypes). Clusters VI and VII were the most divergent with an inter cluster distance of 5.162. This suggests that the parents for hybridization could be selected especially for powdery mildew resistance (Sanori No. 5, Noki and Mirchia) and smaller stone size (Illaichi and Kishmish) from these diverse clusters, in order to develop useful disease resistant and smaller stone size breeding material for Indian jujube.