抄録
The present study was conducted at Regional Plant Genetic Resources Center, RARS, Ishurdi, Pabna, Bangladesh during rabi season of 2011-12. Multivariate analysis was carried out to assess the genetic diversity among eleven cowpea germplasm. Mahalanobis generalized distance (D2) analysis was used to group the cowpea genotypes. A total of 88.02 % variation was observed from PCA against first five eigen values while only first two values were responsible for 50.11 % variation. Considering the mean values, the germplasm were grouped into four clusters. Maximum numbers (4) genotypes were included in cluster III and a minimum number (2) genotypeswere included in both cluster II and IV. Among the clusters, the highest inter-cluster distance was obtained between the cluster IV and II (23.952) andthe lowest one was obtained between II and I (6.753). The maximum value of intercluster distance indicated that genotypes belonging to cluster IV were far diverged from those of cluster II. The first female flower initiation was earlier in BD-8344 (97 days) than the other germplasm. BD-8348 produced maximum number of pods per plant (41.20). The highest grain yield per plant (66.65g) was recorded from entry BD-8344 and the lowest grain yield per plant (28.80g) was also obtained in BD- 1604.
