Genetic divergence in pumpkin

Genetic divergence using Mahalanobis's D2 statistic was studied for 13 quantitative characters in 21 diverse pumpkin genotypes. The genotypes differed significantly for all the 13 characters considered collectively and were grouped in 10 clusters on the basis of relative magnitude of D2 values. The maximum genetic distance was observed between clusters III and VI. The characters namely number of days to first female flowering, vine length, number of first female flowering node, fruit weight, number of seeds per fruit, number of fruits per vine and thousand seed weight contributed maximum divergence and played major role in the improvement of fruit yield in pumpkin.