Abstract

Aim: The study was aimed to investigate cluster analysis of drought tolerant tef genotypes.

Materials and Methods: Forty nine tef genotypes were studied for days to seedling emergence, days to heading, days to physiological maturity, plant height, panicle length, culm length, grain filling period, number of spikelet per panicle, lodging index, grain yield, number of primary panicle branches per main shoot, number of fertile tillers per plant, number of total tillers per plant, number of floret per spikelet, peduncle length, thousand seed weight,  above-ground biomass and harvest index in simple lattice design at Alemtena and Melkassa Agricultural research sites with the objective to identify better yield and important traits drought tolerant genotypes after clustering them based on their response to yield and yield related traits at drought prone areas. All genotypes clustered based on 18 important traits used as variable and dendrogram prepared.

Results: UPGMA revealed that these genotypes formed twelve distinct clusters. Cluster II, was relatively low mean values of days toheading (30.21), days to physiological maturity (71.08), above-ground biomass (14812.00kg/ha) as compared to the other clusters. This indicated that genotypes in cluster II could be selected for early maturity performance of traits for future tef crop improvement. Cluster IV consisted of three genotypes (Dtt2 X Kaye Murri (RIL-117), DZ-Cr-387 X Dtt2 (RIL-118) and Dtt2 X Dtt13 (RIL-119)) and it were characterized by relatively high values for grain yield (3408 kg/ha).

Conclusion: The genotypes which had larger genetic distance indicate wide genetic divergence, therefore, if such lines are crossed, high variability and better transgressive sergeants may be developed.

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