Assessment of genetic divergence by factor analysis in groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.)

Abstract

Factor analysis, Principal component analysis, discriminent analysis, and cluster analysis were carried out with a multivariate data on 30 characters of 62 bunch type groundnut varieties grown in upland during khariff 1982 and rice fallows during summer 1982. Vegetative, reproductive and growth factors were identified as the causative factors of genetic divergence in both the environments. A height factor was also found to work with rice fallows. The characters which were most amenable to change due to selection in these factors were identified. They were not found to agree with the results obtained from discriminant analysis. When factor loadings were estimated from principal components, clustering of characters were found identical to those obtained from factor analysis.